I dont remember how old you said rocky is, but he is still a pup. most likely (though it could be something else) he is not fully comprehending his instincts, senses or whatever you want to call it. basically he is a teenager...when he senses your friends fear he over reacts and considers him a threat, when you think someone or something is a threat he probably knows it isnt and is trying to reassure you. give it time and just try to show him that your friend is NOT a threat, and praise him when he shows you that something isnt a threat. now of course if your friend is holding a gun and he growls and/or barks that is a different story, same as if he thinks there is no threat when you know without a doubt it is a threat. but with time, patience and guidance he will figure it out.
as for schutzhund, its not about training aggression. it is obedience first and foremost, and equal parts tracking and protection/bite work. the bite work is about teaching the dog confidence as well as when and where (where on the bad guy) to bite. it is a whole lot more than that but that is the basic/general explanation. as has been said before, it varies from dog to dog within the same breed, and within the same litter...and schutzhund is also not a garauntee, it just raises the odds (depending on the dog it could raise them exponentially, or just a little bit) that a dog will follow through with an attack. what I mean by follow through is for example: say strider has had NO schutzhund training and someone breaks into my house with intent to harm me and/or my wife. I would have no doubt that he would bark, growl, snarl, sling slobber all over the house and jump against the door or window the bad guy was coming through. (most cases by my understanding, this will not only scare away the bad guy but also make them wet their pants). but say the guy is not scared off and comes through anyway, most likely I would expect him to bite the guy and fight him. but if the guy fights back, punches, kicks, knees, bites, stabs, shoots or otherwise hurts strider during the fight...I dont know if he would continue to fight.
considering he is being trained in schutzhund, has great drive and great bite work, I think he would continue to fight but as was mentioned earlier "the proof is in the pudding". schutzhund is a simulation, not a real life scenario. am I sure it raises the odds in many cases? absolutely. am I sure even my last dog, with sch III title and a bite that cracked the fiberglass in-sleeve of the bite sleeve twice, would have continued to fight after being injured? I dont know for sure because it never happened, but I would GUESS the odds were extremely high that he would have.
I cant say for certain that wildwings's dog would have followed through if the drunks had harmed rocky. only wildwings can say how likely he thinks those odds would have been. if thats good enough for him/her then I trust that opinion. I can only speak for my dogs.
the closest any of my dogs have ever come to the hypothetical scenario I described above was when I was 16, maybe 17. there had been a rash of break ins in our rural subdivision in chesterfield missouri. by rural I mean the smallest acreage in the neighborhood was 4 acres, there were many properties that were not built on and at the time I think there were maybe 20? houses total. our property was right next door to somewhere in the neighborhood of a few thousand acres (have to ask my dad to know for sure, probably 1,000 but to a teenage boy it seemed like 10,000) owned by st albans. they now have a country club, golf course and subdivision but the land next to ours
http://www.terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T=4&S=8&Z=15&X=13942&Y=85514&W=3&qs=|chesterfield|mo| (that was our house, the land behind the house is part of st albans. if you want to you can type in 1308 top of the hill drive chesterfield missouri. thats the address) is still woods and fields used for their shooting club (clay pigeons and cage shoots which are when they release pheasant, guail etc and shoot them as they fly). the nearest gast station was a 15-20 minute drive.
anyway...atleast 5 houses had been broken into. small items were stollen and larger expensive items were broken, such as big screen tv's. one night around 11 pm we were waiting for a mare (died less than a year later due to collic, after 2 surgeries removed over 12 feet of intestine) to foal (give birth). my brothers fiance was at our house waiting with us when we saw headlights approaching, sit still, then shut off. it wasnt uncommon for teenagers to come into our subdivision to make out and more so we didnt expect anything but went with flashlights to check it out. the car was only about 100 yards from our house but when we got to it, it was empty. dad sent my brother back to the house to call the police and the other two houses on our street to let them know.
dad and me (and my german shepherd) stayed by the car waiting for whoever it was to come back, while we shined (shone?) our flashlights into the pasture searching for movement. dad called out "we have called the cops so you might as well come out." after a few minutes he called out "you have 5 seconds to come out before my son sends out his dog who will attack you unless he tells him not too." he started counting and I started getting nervous, I was young and this was more excitement than I anticipated. well...when he got to 1 I gave him the command to search and hold. he slid under the fence and made a bee-line about 50? feet into the tall grass and started barking and growling. suddenly a dark figure stood up and ran. tanker leapt and grabbed his right arm, held him on the ground untill I got up there ( a few scared paces behind my dad) and told him to release, but not to heel. he stood over the guy and didnt move. he ended up being a 20 year old boyfriend of a neighbour. it was early march and still really cold, I think it snowed really early the next morning, so he had several layers on including a thick coat and he wasnt hurt. he admitted to the cop who showed up about 30 minutes later, that he and a few friends (2 were hiding across the far fence of the pasture) were the ones who had broken into the other houses and that they had tried to break into our house a few nights before and a 4th friend had hurt his foot when he tried to kick in our basement door. they were coming back to tear up our stuff as pay back. when his parents found out about everything and called us, my dad of course was thinking "lawsuit lawsuit, oh sh**!!" but they thanked us for not hurting him, for not pressing charges for tresspassing, and apologized for the trouble. they even offered to pay for the broken door frame, which dad declined either to be nice or because he was just so happy they didnt want to sue us.
if this guy had faught back, or hurt tanker I dont know if he would have followed through or not. luckily we didnt find out and I hope I never have to with strider or any future dogs. but it WAS his intense schutzhund obedience training under stress that made him so obedient in this situation.
