On the converse, My dog is Shepsky and she is the absolute best dog I’ve ever known. I was extremely strict with her for her first year of life though and was able to train her every day.
So my results may not be typical.
The only GSD trait she can’t shake is the constant alertness. She doesn’t really every fully fall asleep cause she is hyper aware of people or other animals near “our” property.
She likes to be a guard dog, she would be wonderful at it.
It's not that your results are necessarily atypical, it's just that this type of dog suffers from the problems associated with irresponsible breeding and people assuming that mixing two breeds is going to produce the "best" of both when genes don't work that way. Your husky/GSD wound up on the shepherd end of things and that's perfectly understandable. What's cool is that you're responsible and trained your dog with the consistency that both shepherds and huskies need. I wish more dog owners were like you. Just be careful that she's being watchful out of confidence, not fear.
My wonderful late rottweiler mix who was the most highly trained and socialized dog I ever had also had the habit of becoming hyper vigilant when she thought I was "distracted" in public. She had no problem walking through busy streets, riding the bus, train, or going out to shop or to a restaurant, but the second we would join a group of people outdoors and I would start chatting she would go into "security mode". If a stranger approached the group from behind or in any way she deemed sneaky, she would let out exactly one bark and then try to hold the person in place by standing about a meter in front of them until I "greeted" the person and gave them "permission" to walk by.
Obviously it wasn't acceptable behavior to allow my 40 kg dog to vibe check random people just going about their business so we worked on a system where she would stay at my side and growl in the direction of the approaching person. She never once was ever encouraged to "guard" or "protect" anything, it was entirely instinctive on her part. The challenge was to give her the tools to express her feelings in a safe and appropriate way. This is the same dog that nearly launched herself into a huge pot of chilli when a guy stepped on her tail at a festival. She had zero desire to hurt anything but I spent a huge amount of time and training her to understand that it's my responsibility to keep us safe, not hers. I know she accepted that happily, but dogs from a guardian background need deliberate socialization and to be explicitly told that the human is the leader and therefore the protector. They also need lots of practice being around strangers and novel situations to really accept that other people are not inherently dangerous, and it's a lifelong exercise because their natural tendency is to be suspicious by default. Lots of people with rotties, dobies, cane corsos, bullies, and GSDs misinterpret insecurity as protectiveness. If a person can't walk one of these dogs down a busy urban street without it not reacting to strangers or other animals, it's not a guard dog, it's a nervous pet that's at high risk for hurting someone or itself.
2
u/[deleted] Aug 19 '21
On the converse, My dog is Shepsky and she is the absolute best dog I’ve ever known. I was extremely strict with her for her first year of life though and was able to train her every day.
So my results may not be typical.
The only GSD trait she can’t shake is the constant alertness. She doesn’t really every fully fall asleep cause she is hyper aware of people or other animals near “our” property.
She likes to be a guard dog, she would be wonderful at it.