ALL ABOUT LIVING WITH ROTTWEILER DOGS
ALL ABOUT LIVING WITH ROTTWEILER DOGS
 |
| ALL ABOUT LIVING WITH ROTTWEILER DOGS |
I live in Colton, California.
I've had Rottweilers for 32 years.
I've been involved in conformation, Schutzhund, obedience, tracking, just general things to do with the dogs.
Over the 32 years, we've raised 15 Rottweilers from puppies to adulthood, and they lived their whole life here.
The end kennel, that's our tomato garden.
We build a kennel so we can keep tomatoes in the garden,
to keep the dogs out of them.
Nitro, you're okay.
They're a strong breed.
They're easy to live with at home.
When I first got involved with them, there weren't very many, so it was a rare breed.
It took us six months from the time we decided we wanted a Rottweiler until we found the first litter
of puppies that we could look at, and they were just an attractive, different breed.
that's what attracted us to them.
1984 was when we got our first dog.
The biggest thing I love about the dogs is they're independent, but they're trainable.
They have a different personality than a lot of dogs.
They can be left alone, and they can be a pest and be right beside you too.
They're just a good all-around family dog as well as a dog that you can do any sport you want to with them, and you can participate in conformation shows all with the same dog.
Their original purpose, they were a herding dog that the ranchers used to herd cattle to the market. And then they were a protection dog
that they put the bag of money around the dog's neck and went back home with the dog protecting the money.
That was their main purpose.
Their use now, some are mostly used for family dogs.
 |
| ALL ABOUT LIVING WITH ROTTWEILER DOGS |
They can be used as a guard dog.
A few police departments use them, but they're a little too hard, too tough for most police departments, but they're just a good all-around dog.
People herd with them still.
My pets are basically house pets.
They go for a walk, not often.
I'm getting too old to go walking every day, but we do walk with them.
We take them to dog shows.
We do conformation, and they're just a good, easy to live with a house pet.
The first thing that I did with my dogs was Schutzhund, which is the basic training that police dogs get.
They do tracking, obedience, and protection work, and it's a competition.
The Schutzhund dogs do it for sport.
It's not to make their vicious dogs, but it's a competition where you're competing with your training.
You're not competing against another dog.
You're competing against your own training and against a score.
And it's a time-consuming sport.
You have to go tracking a couple of days a week. Get up in the morning and go out while it's cool. You do obedience four or five days a week, and you train with a club a couple of days a week to do protection work.
I've also done AKC obedience, where it's mostly training.
Something you do 15, 20 minutes a day of training with the dogs.
Conformation, after they've once learned how to do it, you can go to a dog show, and they remember.
You don't have to train as hard, and it's just a fun competition and to get a champion is prestige for the owner.
It doesn't mean anything to the dog, but it does to us.
We had three litters in the early '90s, and we had a hard time finding good homes for them, and the biggest thing when we sold a puppy,
we were responsible for it for the rest of its life.
And nothing was more depressing than a good home that we thought deserved a nice Rottweiler puppy, and due to a divorce, they brought a puppy back to us when it was 18 months old, a male, he weighed less than 50 pounds, had sores all over him, and to think that we had produced that, and we chose the home, and for him to suffer like that
just made us decide it wasn't worth it to breed again.
I wouldn't recommend a Rottweiler to a senior citizen, particularly not as their first dog.
If you've grown up with them and have adapted to them,
then you're ready for it.
But the cute little 20-pound puppy that you bring home, they gain two pounds a week, and in a year, they're 104-pound male Rottweiler, and it's an awful lot for a senior citizen that's not experienced with dogs to handle.
(toy squeaking) When we first started in the dogs,
we were both in our early 40s, and it was fun to do all the things that we did.
We were involved in clubs, and as you get older, you slow down, and the dogs don't slow down. They still have the same energy, but you adapt your way of life to what the dogs are.
Now our dogs are companions that sit on the couch with us and watch TV.
They're in the house eating with us, being general pets instead of being trained.
the biggest problem with a Rottweiler is their energy level sometimes doesn't work with older people.
They dart out the door.
They can knock your legs out from under you.
you have to be careful, and that's why you have to adapt your way of life to what the dogs are.
Okay, that's enough.
Come on, you idiot.
Come on, it's time to go.
Let's go. Out. - Yeah, that's right.
- Come on. - [Boy] They had at this.
- Thank you.
This is Marley.
She's a four-year-old female.
Her parents are from Serbia.
She was born here in the United States, so she has a docked tail.
If she had been born in Serbia, she would've had a natural tail.
She's an AKC champion.
She won both shows last weekend.
The biggest thing that we've done is we've got gates in the house to keep the dogs in an area when we have company.
We adapt to make sure that we're touching the wall or have balance so they don't knock your legs out from under you.
They're big dogs.
My males weigh 100 pounds to 115, maybe 120 pounds.
The females weigh about 80, 85 pounds.
if they hit you in the back of the knees, they can knock you down.
as you get older, you don't have the balance that you had when you're younger, so you just adapt and make sure that you have something to hold on to
when the dogs are around.
This is Sam.
He's a six-year-old male.
He weighs about 100 pounds.
He's an AKC champion also.
This one is very dark in the face.
It's incorrect as far as to show dogs.
As he gets older, his markings are going away.
Sam, look.
He has correct eyes and the rest, but the dark markings go against him in the shows.
We don't go on vacation because we have too many dogs, and it costs too much money to put them in a boarding kennel, so if they can't go with us, we don't go.
That's why we have a van, and it also makes it where if we have to, for some reason if we had an emergency and had to leave, we're set up where we can take the dogs and leave the property and have the dogs in our car with us.
I have the van set up with crates in the back
for 2 dogs that are there.
we can put two in the other seats, or actually, we have a Staffordshire bull terrier too, and he'd be riding in the front seat in our lap, but we just keep, there's water in the van at all times, there's food, and it's ready to go in case we have an emergency.
 |
| ALL ABOUT LIVING WITH ROTTWEILER DOGS |
I live in a middle-class neighborhood.
Everybody has a dog.
Most of the people have their front yard fenced with wrought iron fences, but a good many of the dogs in the neighborhood are small terriers and particularly chihuahuas, and they get out, they come through the fence.
There are dogs getting run over in the neighborhood because people are not responsible for taking care of their dogs.
That's why we have set up where our dogs can't get out on the street.
We don't want them to get run over, and we don't want a quarantine sign in front of our house where it bites somebody.
We have a pit bull down the street that the people, their front yard fence is not tall enough.
The dog jumped over the fence and bit a lady here just a couple of weeks ago.
Their dog is quarantined because they don't take the steps to keep their dog safe.
That's why we've spent over $20,000 on the fence around my property to make sure my dogs stay safe and that people that walk down the street are safe also.
We feel it's our responsibility to protect our dogs from anything that can come into their property and bother them and to also protect anybody walking down the street
so that my dogs don't interfere with what they're doing.
So we have a wrought iron fence around the front yard that we had the slats put closer together so that dogs can't come into the yard and have a problem.
We have, in the side yard, we have a separate fence where our gas meter is.
The gas company has a key that they can come in the gate, and they can read the meter, but it keeps them safe when they have to read the meter.
In the other part of the backyard, we have a separate area
where our air conditioner is fenced off separate because Rottweilers chew, and we've had them in the past chew up the wires and the copper tubing on the air conditioner, so we've got a fence around that to protect them from the air conditioner and so that we can stay cool.
Then the backyard, we have a six-foot block wall around it.
One of my male Rottweilers jumps up on it and hooks his elbows over it, and he surveys the neighborhood.
So to keep him from going over it, we've got 18 inches more wrought iron on top of the fence to make it safe for him and to make it safe for my neighbors and their kids also.
Rottweilers don't do very well in the heat.
They have a dog room when they're loose, and it has access to the backyard, so they can take care of their business,
but basically, they're in the house.
Everybody wants 13 acres of property so the dogs can run, but we just need a bigger house because they live in the house.
We feed premium dog food and raw meat also.
They get two cups of kibble a day, two eight-ounce measuring cups, not coffee cups, and one cup of raw meat.
We feed beef, pork, chicken, anything that we can find cheap at the market and grind.
I have a grinder, and we grind it for the dogs.
Rottweilers are terrible at overeating.
They can get fat.
That's why you hear the stories of the 200 pound Rottweiler.
He's not a healthy Rottweiler.
He just has been fed everything he wants, and he weighs 200 pounds.
To maintain the weight of my dogs, they eat two cups of kibble and one cup of meat a day, and they're fed one time a day.
They're fed at night because if I feed them in the morning, we do most of our dog showing
and our exercise stuff early in the morning, and I don't want the dogs doing that on a full stomach because of bloat.
bloat happens from overeating and exercising after eating along with other genetic problems that cause it too, but by feeding our dogs in the evening, they eat, and then they're ready to go to bed shortly after, and we've had them for 30 years and never had a bloat problem by doing it that way.
We not only feed our dogs grain-free premium dog food and raw meat but for our treats, we use Evolve.
It's grain-free, corn-free, soy-free, with the number one ingredient real chicken.
We use it for treats when we're training and for rewards when they do what we want them to do.
(rooster crowing) Usually, they get up around seven in the morning, and 10, 10:30 at night is bedtime.
they all have a separate crate, their separate area.
they're crated at night to keep them from getting in trouble and to protect them from chewing up stuff in the house.
With big dogs, you have to make accommodations for them in the house.
We don't have a coffee table because if anything gets set on the coffee table, it gets knocked off.
Lamps, we don't have expensive lamps
because they bump the table, and everything crashes.
The TV's bolted down because if they run into the table, they knock the TV off.
You make accommodations for it.
We have a dog room.
The only thing that's in it in the freezer that we keep their meat in, and there's no furniture in there because they do eat furniture.
They do tear up the pads.
We've had them break the backs off of the couch
running and jumping on it.
When you have a big dog and have them in the house, they do damage.
They've eaten holes in the wall, pulled the insulation out.
They can be destructive.
It's a breed that's not for everybody.
It's for somebody that wants to take responsibility for their dogs, that is prepared to handle a big dog that is a bit intimidating, and you have to be responsible for taking care of your dog and protecting your dog from itself.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk about Rottweilers.
They've been my passion for 32 years.
I love the breed.
I think they're a great family pet.
My grandkids play with them.
I have a 10-year-old granddaughter that when she comes down, takes my dogs out in the yard and does obedience with them, and she teaches my dogs more than I do. They're a great family pet if you take care of them. You have to be responsible to own the breed, and I just think that they're misunderstood.
They have a lot of bad reputations, but I think a lot of it is bad owners that don't take responsibility for what they have. (soft piano music)
Post a Comment