German Shepherds and Children: Prince Meets His Match

The first time Prince began to  bark at a child, I immediately assumed that he had been upset by something that the child had unintentionally done.  I thought the child might have shrieked, moved too quickly or even showed him some object he was not accustomed to.  I realized I was wrong when Prince met Selena.

When  Selena was a baby, her mother would frequently pass my yard pushing her in a stroller...and Prince would bark at them to the point that the mother would become uncomfortable.  I thought it was because her stroller reminded him of a lawn mower (like many other dogs, Prince has always had a strong reaction to mowers).  The real reason for his barking, however, became apparent when he encountered her later, when she was big enough to walk.

A Bottle!

We were passing the house that she lived in when she unexpectedly came toddling toward us, and stopped immediately in front of the fence that we were walking by.  I saw her grandfather start to come after her, but immediately change his mind when he saw Prince.  Prince himself barely seemed to notice her when she was within touching difference, until she shouted at him.

At first, he looked at her with an expression that almost seemed to convey surprise. Then his tail began to wag, faster and faster, and his ears went all the way down, and he put his nose through the fence and began to nuzzle and then lick her face as she grabbed at him.  That was when I had my epiphany.

Prince and his Bottle

Prince was not barking at her (or any of the other children) because he felt aggressively toward them.

Prince was barking at them because he wanted their attention, and as soon as they gave it to him, he stopped barking.

This is one "trait" that Prince continues to possess to this day.  He still barks at small children and babies...until they come close enough that he can sniff and lick them. Then he immediately stops until they move away.  He actually does the same thing with any of the neighbors who pass by that normally talk to him or pet him.  If they fail to do so immediately, he will bark at them until they do what he wants them to.

Somehow, and I really am not sure why, I have ended up with an inordinately friendly German Shepherd Dog.  He likes ALMOST everybody...there are a few notable exceptions, but for the most part, Prince actually thinks that almost everyone wants to be his friend.  I think part of the reason may be because he has met so many people.  Another part may be that he has never been hurt by a human being.  Since Prince has never been afraid of anyone, he has never had to act aggressively to anyone.

Prince's attitude has surprised a lot of people...but perhaps no one was more surprised than the crew of construction workers that we happened to run into last summer.

German Shepherds and Children Part 5: The Little Girl in the Pink Pants

Having had only positive experiences with German Shepherds during my own childhood, I expected Prince to love children...especially since he seemed to love almost everyone else so much.  At first, it seemed he did.  During the first year I walked Prince, we actually met a small boy in the park that Prince was delighted to meet.  Therefore, the first time a small child happened to wander past my yard unattended, I actually smiled in anticipation of the delight that she and Prince would find in each other.  As she toddled past my back yard fence, I calmly waited for Prince to notice her, and smiled as he rushed toward her, coming to a stop in front of her inside the fence.

I can still remember that long moment as her tiny head turned toward him, and his giant head loomed over her.  For a second, I thought she was going to smile, and maybe Prince did, too, because his tail wagged the slightest bit.

Then she screamed.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that she was terrified by the sight of an animal 10 times larger than herself, but Prince took her reaction very personally.  He began to bark at her...loudly...and since he was standing immediately before her, the noise must have been deafening.  The poor little thing turned to flee, still screaming, and suddenly (and unfortunately) Prince turned into a herding dog.

Every way she tried to run, he was there, his hindquarters up and his head down, barking in her face.  When she turned right, he was there.  When she turned left, he was there.  Eventually her mother heard her and came racing up the street to grab her, paused when she saw Prince, and then, in an act of heroic bravery, dashed forward, grabbed her daughter, and fled.  All the while, the little girl was still screaming and Prince was still barking.

Once his daughter had been rescued, her father came marching toward my house in a fury, probably to chastise me for my dog's behavior.  The only amusing part about the entire incident was that when he saw Prince, he turned on his heel without breaking stride and marched back to his house without saying a word.

Disappointed by Prince's reaction (Prince loves almost everyone!), I discussed it with my sister.  After she discussed it with a friend, she relayed that it was probably the screaming that had gotten Prince so excited, and that was why he had barked at her so much.

At the time, it seemed like a reasonable explanation, or at least one I found vaguely comforting.  As with so many things about Prince, however, it turned out to be an erroneous assumption.

German Shepherds and Children Part 4 - Prince II

Years ago, I read an article about German Shepherds that claimed while they were good with their own family's children, they tended to be less so with the children of other people.  In my own personal experience, there is no better example of this than Prince II...the first dog we owned after Prince William.

Prince of Holland was a beautiful sable German Shepherd that was bred by a work associate of my father. When this man told my father about the puppies, my father decided to go ahead and get one for us.  This time, it was my younger sister who was allowed the privilege of picking out our next dog, who, unfortunately, turned out to be a colossal mistake.

In retrospect, we should have known from the start that Prince II was not the best bred German Shepherd, because when my father and sister went to pick him out, his mother had to be confined so that she wouldn't attack them.  I've heard it said that it's always best to meet a puppy's parents before you take it home, and it certainly would have applied in Prince's case.

From the start, Prince had problems.  He was extraordinarily difficult to housebreak and inordinately submissive.  Any time an adult man would try to grab him or even pet him, he would urinate and sometimes even scream.  He was destructive, as well...any time he was left alone for an extended period of time, he would tear apart everything from furniture to books to toys.  My father immediately pronounced him to be a fear biter...a badly bred dog that, according to him, should have been destroyed, and would have been if he had been bred for the military.  His remedy for this was to punish him by hitting him with a rolled up newspaper, which was traumatic both for Prince and for us.  Every time Prince had an accident, I would cringe in my room and cover my ears, not wanting to hear the noise of his being punished, because I loved Prince.

All three of us (my sisters and I) adored him.  This was in spite of the fact that he was extraordinarily "nippy" and would frequently nip us by accident, usually drawing blood.  We always forgave him because when we cried, he would cry with us...sitting right up against us and howling until we stopped crying in order to comfort him.  We called him Princee, and in our eyes, he could do no wrong.

When Prince tore things up, we picked up the pieces and hid them so nobody would know.  When he nipped us by accident, we pretended something else had happened.  When he had an accident, we cleaned it up.  When our next door neighbor bent over to work in her garden by our fence, and Prince nipped her hair through the links, we defended him and said she had been yelling at him first.  And Prince adored us all in return.  He always wanted to be with us, was always delighted to play with us and was always there to comfort us when we were sad.

One day, my younger sister invited a friend over, and when the friend ran across our back yard, Prince ran after her and grabbed her by the arm.  In spite of the fact that the little girl was unperturbed by his actions, and he didn't even bruise her, my father decided it was the end of the road for Prince.  The next day when we came home from school, Prince was gone.

Initially, my father told us he had given him away to a policeman.  Later, he admitted he had had Prince destroyed, because he was convinced Prince would end up hurting somebody.  At the time, I wondered why my father, who had trained dogs in the military, didn't take the time to train Prince better, but when I asked him this, he said it would have been impossible.

Oddly enough, of all the dogs we had during my childhood, I loved Prince II the most.  I think it was because he loved us so very much.  He might not have been good with other people's children, and he wasn't exactly the best with us, but I still miss him, and he is the dog I named my Prince Black Star for.

German Shepherds and Children 3 - Count and I

Since my father had trained German Shepherds in the military as a young man, he considered himself to be an expert on them, and on what they would and would not do in a particular situation.  One day, when I was very young, we had a disagreement about what a German Shepherd would do if it were ordered to do something against its will.  My father said a German Shepherd could be trained so well, that even if it were ordered to kill someone it loved, it would do so...out of fear of its trainer.  I childishly insisted that this was untrue.

Oddly enough, I was right, and there is no better example of this than Count.

Count was an exceptionally well-behaved dog that never showed any defiance when ordered to do something.  At the same time, he was extremely protective, and if he thought one of us were being threatened, he would literally interpose himself between us and whatever he thought was threatening us, regardless of the consequences.  The extent of his valor in this regard became apparent to me one day when I was arguing with my father.

My father thought that everything the military and the government did was right.  As a rebellious teenager who listened to music from the 60s on a regular basis, I strongly disagreed.  One day, after a series of arguments about the justice of certain military interventions, I happened to be listening to one of my favorite 60s artists, and my father lost his temper.

I was sitting downstairs in front of my stereo, with Count, when my father stormed into the room, grabbed the record off the turntable and threw it onto the ground.  Then he turned toward me and began shouting.  I don't remember what he said.  I only remember how frightened I was, of what was happening and what might happen next, and that Count suddenly stood up and made himself a barrier between us.

Count at 7 years of age

My father yelled at Count.  Then he tried to shove him out of the way...but Count refused to budge.  No matter how angry my father became, Count refused to give in...and eventually my father gave up and stormed back upstairs, leaving me alone with Count.

I immediately got down on my knees and hugged and kissed him.  Count responded in a somewhat aloof manner, as if he were disappointed by the entire series of events, and the fact that he had been forced to disobey.  With a loud sigh, he pulled away from me and went to lie down in a different part of the room, and I picked up the record and quickly put it away.

When I think about it now, I think it shows that what I thought as a child was right.  Fear is never as strong of a motive as love, and the love that German Shepherds (and other dogs) have for children is something immeasurably more powerful than their fear of anything...or anyone.