This is Achilles he's a five year old Neapolitan Mastiff. I'm guessing he's about 160 lbs. I'll be able to get an official weight in the next few weeks. He's very aggressive, it's taken about two weeks to earn his trust. I can handle him now and was able walk him for the first time yesterday. He's got a lot of strong defense in a month or so I'll be taking him to do some bitework. He also has no OB so I've been working on that as well.
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Midgard Kennels - Protection bred American Bandog Mastiffs
Holy crap that's a big paw. If you're able to kneel beside him like that that's already something. When these dogs bond they usually become quite soft with the owner. I wonder if it will go this way with him. Please put up some vids if you can.
Looks really good. So what are your goals with this dog David? Are you going to breed him? What are his lines, and are there dogs related to him with similar temperament?
A lot of people think aggressive neos are all defense and unstable. I know they are capable of possessing some serious fight drive. But in that case it's questionable whether you can get the kind of stability around strangers that you would with a good GSD, mal, or rott.
As for whether other dogs in his line are similar to him I don't know the man who had him before me got him as a pup from a breeder in Washington state. I do know he's capable of passing on his drives because he has a very drivey neo son who's out of his first litter. He's about one year old. I doubt I'll ever be able to take him to petsmart or anything. I feel like I would be able to if I'd had him from a pup and socialized and trained him. I know quite a few half neo dogs that are very aggressive and still very stable. Kronos is one of them. In my experience instability is usually associated with poor training methods, lack of socialization, insecurity with high defense drive, or high rank drive. The key to a stable dog with high defense is strong confidence. The dog sees you as a potential threat but he's really not that worried about it because he knows if you try anything he can handle you no problem. A lower confidence dog will be stressed about the potential threat and looking for a way to remove the person causing them stress. That can lead to unprovoked aggression in an effort to run them off.
I've seen plenty of fight drive in him with defense and territorial aggression and even a little rank though only toward strangers. But he's not under stress, he's not raising fur on his back or showing stress in his bark. He hasn't been formally worked yet, this is just what I've seen of him. Once I have a stronger bond with him and a little OB I'll do some bitework and we'll know more.
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Midgard Kennels - Protection bred American Bandog Mastiffs
In life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master's own
Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone.
-Lord Byron
Not bad for a such a big boned dog. I'm not sure about that gallop though, but it's been a long time since I studied neo movement. Neos don't have the endurance of the herders for running around, but they can move lightning fast when the situation calls for it. I've long pondered the importance of stamina in a man stopper. Most real life encounters don't last long, and dogs motivated by defense don't lose interest like the more prey driven dogs.
It's a lot easier to see how he moves on a longer stretch and on flat ground. But his stride is so long he's too far from the camera by the time he gets leveled out in a good trot. So it's hard to film. At least you can see how he's not lumbering or struggling to move himself even uphill. If I had an ATV I'd run him with that and try to film him in a full rotary gallop running I can't get him past a transverse gallop (horse gallop) though he did go rotary in the video to get up the hill in one of the laps. But watching him run off leash he's got an easy stride for a Neo his size. He couldn't run with my Bandogs for long but no Neo could. The main thing I'm happy about is he won't be adding a lot of negatives when I bring his blood in.
As for stamina in a manstopper, I tend to feel like the ability to absorb damage is more important, because a man isn't going to fight a dog like him for very long. He'll just be doing a lot more damage per second than a man. You just can't survive fighting a dog like that in armed and unprotected long enough to wear him out. The only chance is to have a weapon. So you can expect anyone confronting a manstopping dog to try to arm themselves that's where a man can win and where a mastiffs ability to take hugh amounts of damage before being killed is so important. It's also a great feature of game bred dogs to go to the very edge of death and never quit. In a family guard dog they may be called on to fight to the death with a one or more attackers without any human backup. That's not something a GSD or Mal police dog will be called on to do they always have an armed officer right behind them. Plus police dogs are man catchers killing isn't part of the job.
That said I'm not just breeding for a single engagement dog like a guard dog. I'm looking to return the mastiff to it's place as a war dog. Even if they have no place in modern war. Any dog that can fight men all day on the battle field needs size, power, toughness, speed and stamina. So I like stamina and breed for it.
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Midgard Kennels - Protection bred American Bandog Mastiffs
My new Neo Achilles
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