Re: The CAT thread
I think I already posted this somewhere at TWC, however..
I used to have Caucasian Shepherds, that's a kind of dog that really is for few
long story short: I would have never thought of getting a dog like that myself, but my neighbor and friends, who actually is a shepherd, got some of them because of wolves (few of them actually) and stray dogs in the mountains. However on the second generation he had too many of them and gifted me the first one, I had them for about 15 years (2 generations, they don't live more than 10-11) and I've never seen worse bastards when they decided to become so. Just to give you an idea of the power such dogs have, one of them (Serpente, Snake in english) had a back wider than mine (and I'm a big dude eh) and was able to detach a steel gate from a concrete wall ... more than once
However, my experience tells me that how a dog could react in a given situation depends on: the breed, the character and skills of the owner and the training.. all elements are essential; knowing your dog is the base (i.e. Caucasian shepherds are usually aggressive towards other dogs, the more there are of them the less they can control themselves), being calm and aware of everything that goes around is must for the owner and finally having trained the dog to react with some specific commands of control is very useful.
said the above, I agree with Cookie, Gates' a bastard