Training Personal Protection Dogs for Texas Life
Some of the best graduates of Protection Dogs Plus’ training program are keeping families safe in Texas. See Klaus, one of our Guardian level protection dogs, being delivered to his Houston, TX in this video. A key component of preparing personal protection dogs for life in Texas is getting them accustomed to working not just under high stress, but in high temperatures. This summer has given us plenty of opportunities to do that, with MA and NH experiencing several heat weaves in the past month alone. Daily outdoor protection training sessions in a all different temperatures mean that the German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois we train for protection don’t need much pampering. Even when the heat index is high, they still display amazing feats of speed and strength.
Believe it or not, German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois with thicker coats are not a bad fit for hot climates. Their fur acts as an insulator to keep their bodies both from getting too cold and from overheating. Despite their low maintenance qualities, when we deliver personal protection dogs to Texas homes, we stress the importance of providing plenty of shade, airflow and water to any outside guard dogs.
A Texas protection dog is much more likely to find himself tackling a threat in the great outdoors than a protection dog in New York. This is another place where our outdoor work proves its worth. We get the dogs used to covering all kinds of terrain, going over natural obstacles and searching for a threat in thick wooded areas. The dogs are conditioned to track movements with their eyes, ears and noses.
This protection dog training video shows a variety of outdoor situations, including bitework in the woods, tree climbing and jumping over obstacles. In one example, Eteo, a Belgian Malinois trained for protection, jumps over a stream in the woods that would take a human significantly more time and effort to cross. In another, he scales a steep ledge with ease, proving yet again that a fully trained protection dog can run circles around a human criminal! A protection dog’s speed, paired with his sharp sense, means that he can cover and guard the kind of expansive properties that our clients in Texas tend to have.
Snakes are a fact of life in Texas, and creatures like the Texas Coral Snake, Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, Southern Copperhead and Western Coppermouth pose a grave danger to humans and dogs alike. One training exercise we recommend to owners of protection dogs in TX, FL, NC, GA and other southern states is snake alert and avoidance. Using docile, non-venemous snakes, we are able to teach our personal protection dogs to identify and avoid snakes to keep them safe from harm.
See more of our training exercises in our protection dog videos, and read about what some of our more advanced commands mean here.