Unlike “yappy” attack dogs, Rottweiler’s are exceptionally intelligent and they will often “lie-in-waiting” until they can get a firm-hold on evil-doers. (Yappie dogs are often shot by intruders).
Many years ago, Janet had a burglar enter her home. Her Rottie waited silently until the burglar had completely entered through her window and then attacked him savagely, ripping hunks of flesh from his body.
Janet called 911 immediately and grabbed her .38 revolver and went to investigate. There was blood everywhere but the burglar got away, never to be seen again. The police estimated that he had severe blood loss (she said blood was splattered everywhere), and they checked the local hospitals but they were unable to locate him. They suspected that he may have died in the woods, but a body was never found. Worse yet, the blood ruined Janet drapes.
Our current Rottie (Bear) is an exceptionally sweet dog, but watch-out if you have evil on your mind! She has exceptionally good judgment, as we found out when we were hiring a contractor to expand our house. Bear snarled at several contractors, and when we did background checks, both had lied about being licensed and one was a convicted felon! We hired the one that Bear “liked” and I use her to screen my employees now. . . .
From now on, we always use the “Bear test” to see if a person has personal integrity. She has not failed us yet. If Bear does not like you, there is always a good reason. . .
Another thing most folks don’t know about Rottie’s is there huge maternal instinct, especially for cats. When Tiger dumped a litter of kittens in one of the hay barns, Bear told us exactly where Tiger had hidden them and she could not wait to start grooming them! Once the cats understand that she likes them, they enjoy being groomed.
She LOVES to groom kitties and ponies, and the ponies line-up at the fence for a “face wash” every evening. True symbiosis. Living in my petting zoo has taught me a great-deal about animal behavior, and I’m always amazed when animals adopt other babies. Here is a case where a Rottie adopted kittens and even nursed them! We have this same experience with our Arabian horses, and mini’s.
In addition to the Guide Horse Foundation we also run a charity for deformed dwarf horses, and one of our special ponies is Bluebell” a 20 inch-tall dwarf with severely deformed legs.
She has never sexually matured, but when we put an orphan dwarf in with her, she love him as-if he was her own baby, and bagged-up and nursed him. Janet has written a couple of pages about this in her book “Helping Hooves”, our story of training “seeing eye” ponies for the blind:
BTW, some readers have been confused because there are “computer-related” items in this blog, and many of you are not aware that Janet and I work with computers.
While our primary love-of-living comes from the Arabian horse training center, we also do “database consulting” and create computer systems for people using a database called “Oracle”.