Life hack: get a big/brave/scary looking dog

I've had similar instances where someone was trying to mess with my locked door or window at 2am and my dog lets out this nasty loud growl bark. He is super friendly with all, except for the .5% where he knows shit aint right and he gets real serious. Dogs instincts are always correct. In general men won't fuck with a big dog. Or even small dogs, ever see those house cams where the delivery guy is running from a 5lb dog? Men idolize GSDs, malinois, pits, dobes, and all kinds of big dogs because they know when they're serious, shits going down. Dogs don't have a problem being a threat if they feel threatened even if it's over something small. We have a whole category of sports just for working dogs that love to chase and bite. If you like dogs and can commit to daily walks, play time training, health maintenance and taking them out a few times each day, I'd say go for it. Pair with other home security measures. Also I'll never date someone that won't take initiative and help with basic pet care. I have cats too and not once has my ex helped out scooping the box. Didn't want to walk with me and the dog. Taking care of the animals should be automatic and expected in my house if you want to be a part of my life. If you love my animals you should do your part too.

I love my GSD. He has a mean bark and is always vigilant, but he’s can also be a cuddly goof. Always feel safe with him in the house. Ton of work but he’s the best 🥰

I love animals! Always have. My profile pic is of my pitbull…RIP! She was such a great dog. I definitely felt safe taking her out on walks. I was never really in a dangerous situation with her, but have no doubts she would have protected me.

Currently cutie is a rotti/hound mix that has reactive behaviour towards strangers, and men.

We're working on the behaviour, but her instincts are dead on.

Due to my circumstances (I live alone, have a huge yard, retired) I get all the gentle giants, so while I have them, I train them to work through their issues, but also allow them to be the protectors they instinctively are.

It's win/win! I get to have as many dogs as I can take, they learn to behave and trust again, and their adopters get a well behaved dog with healthy instincts.

1000%. The key is to train your dog like other users said - I can’t emphasize that enough speaking from experience. I didn’t train my dog initially, and she nipped at my ex twice. Then I started hard core training and she was much better with him and he even said so. He was still bitter and shamed over the bite, and for months he couldn’t get over it. My dog was definitely still weary of his energy and couldn’t fully trust him. He’d get pissed if she didn’t take a treat from him, he’d literally chuck it across the room and huff and puff. He would walk heavily around her to “desensitize” her (part of training IS desensitizing to certain sounds, but he was doing it out of bitterness or contempt) He then proceeded to ask who was more important— him or my dog. Oh, almost forgot to mention a cat completely mauled his hand the week before we broke up. My dog is a blessing to me because I would have never seen his true character without her. Or worse, I would’ve seen his true colors when we had kids. A man should embrace your pets (and children) as their own if they choose to get involved with you knowing you have dependents.

Funny. In the weekend I googled rottweiler pups. I initially thought I'd like to adopt 2 females to accompany me everywhere I go but then I felt bad because city life sucks. It's dirty, polluted and the pavements are coated in ugliness. If I were to do this, I'll look for as place in the countryside where the pups may run free on the property and enjoy some nature. But NGL... I thought about it intensely for the past couple of days. And I don't even live in US or UK but I know that somehow, what happens there will affect me and the women living in other places across the globe the same way.

On the flip side, although a cat won't be any good for protection, they will almost always prompt red flag behavior from LVM. Most don't like cats due to their independent indifference, but some will instead try to turn the cat into a dog and brag about any perceived loyalty to them. The red flag there is usually them trying to be the cat's favorite person and making a point of the cat preferring them to you (or a child or whoever the cat might have already bonded to). My ex was an abusive narcissist and he loved dogs (for the most part - he was also abusive to them and complained about the upkeep involved) and would ensure that the dogs were the most bonded to him. He also did the same with the cats, but was much more obvious in his abuse of them because he always reacted to shows of independence which a cat obviously has more of. And with both sets of animals, he made sure that I knew that they "liked" him better (not true, they were just trauma bonded to him just like I was, only they couldn't just walk away and take care of themselves). Luckily his second affair partner hated animals and so when he thought he could monkey branch to her and agreed to us splitting, he was more than willing to leave all the animals with me in his hopes of being with her.

Can approve that: i have a large, loud, and scary looking dog that is trained well.

Good tip, but the dog matters. If someone cases your house, they will try to see how easy the dog runs off or is distracted. Get a dog that doesn’t like strangers, but remember you must train it!

I lived in a neighborhood where people got “scary” dogs (pitbull and molosser types) for protection and never trained them. They cycled through dogs because the animal eventually turned on them or lost it on someone or some pet it shouldn’t have.