On Sunday I met my first rottie.  He was enormous but really gentle.  He weighed about 9 stone and came up to about my waist (i'm only 4ft and a spit).  He was also very "vocal" as if he was telling me all his owes.  I have never actually petted a rottie before and he was so soft.

My husband called me out as one of his customers, my husband owns his own vehicle air conditioning repair business and the customer brought his rottie with him as we had been talking the previous day about my staffies who he fell in love with.  I went out the back door and all I could see in the hlaf light was this big broad head peeking around the corner of my house.  I fell in love with him straight away and if I didn't have my staffies I would have a rottie (definately the next breed to own once my staffies have gone and my kiddies are a bit older) don't even have to twist my OH arm either as he fell in love with him too :)

Aah thats sweet :) meet lots of other Rotties before you get one to see all the different types/personalities in the various lines. Our training class is nearly all Dobermans so you see a variety of sizes, shapes and personalities within the one breed. We think of Rotties as gentle giants too as the ones we know are so soft.

I'd like to meet a Rottie too.  I have always been terrified of GSD's but am now developing a fear of Rotties too - there's three that live in my street and one in particular goes mad when anyone walks past and jumps up onto his six foot wall - I'm sure one day he's going to get over it, and I have to walk a different way now.

Please don't jump on me all GSD and Rottie owners, its not a dislike its a fear and I'm hoping soon to be able to befriend someone with a Rottie because I have never 'met' one either and I am ABSOLUTELY terrified, and I know all I need to do is meet a nice one and hopefully things will be different.  I have started chatting to one of the Rottie owners in my street - isn't it brill how you can live in a street for 4 years and not talk to anyone and as soon as you get a dog, you start chatting to people :-D.  Anyone have chatted to her and husband, both together and individually when I have been walking Millie - they always say hello to her if they are in their garden, and I know they have a Rottie, although I've only seen it once, last summer. So maybe one day.  I WILL conquer this fear!

Interesting that you are terrified of GSDs & getting fearful of Rotties(who in the main are the biggest wimps out)

Perhaps you should meet puppies of both breeds & get to know the breeds. It worked well for a lady I know, she ended up with two GSDs after being terrifyied as a child because her parents always told her they were directly from wolves & never to be trusted as they always turn funny. She was thirty when I met her & still believed what her parents told her(they had the nastiest of dogs I ever met-just like his unpleasant owners & the dog was a mongrel)

Three years later she got her first GSD & now always has two.

Me I'm not frightened of any dog even though I've been bitten by a working guide dog whilst a child(it was a lab/golden second gen X) & no I did not upset the dog it dragged it's handler to me whilst I had my back towards them. I do not like any dog with a poor temperament tho nothing to do with being frightened. I've been involved with retraining some of the worst behaved dogs & owners around & have learnt to read the signs of poor temperament & possible attack mode, so I can avoid conflict. We had a very aggressive GSD aged 8 months for retraining along with his owner, who had done no training at all with the dog so we had a nervous dog mentally 8 weeks old in a body of a 8 month old. It took a lot of commitment but the handler has learnt his mistakes & at least the dog is now under control & a lot better behaved

We went on a school trip to france once and the schools house over there had a pet rottie, he was gorgeous and so soft, alls you had to do was stroke him and he would be on his back looking for his belly to be rubbed. I was a bit fearful of the breed before because i had heard bad stories about them but now i also think they are gentle giants :-) I love GSD's too because every one of them i've met is also a big softie.

If anything im a bit fearful of dobermans, mainly because ive never met one and don't know anyone who has one. Then again the only dog i've ever been bitten by was a westie ;-)

i have a male rottie he is so soft unbelivable, our cars were being tampered with the other morning and our gsd bitch who is younger than the rottie was going mad, i got up and looked out the window and ran down the stairs stepped over my rott and let the gsd out of the house to the cars she cleared a 6foot fence and went after the guy, in the meantime rott came out of the house had a pee and stretched seen that he was not needed and headed off back into the house.

We go to dog club obedience,agility,flyball,ringcraft, and new puppies that come to club are normally frightened to death of my rottie,but he loves them and wants to say hello well a 9 stone rottie thundering down on them is enough to put the little ones off, so we always get him to lie down and then the pups are usually brave enough to come up and say hello,problem we have now is we go into club and he hits the floor flat when he sees a puppy and his little stump wiggles away and he winges until they come and see him,
we fostered two guinea pigs for the school, and he loved them he lay beside the cage all the time and when we took them out he would try and clean them like puppies.
before i had my rottie i was frightened of them, but i had two gsd who passed away early of cancer and i said never again,so after two years i decided to look for another dog and my hubby was the one that said get a rottie, so we looked for another year until we found the one we wanted and i have never looked back, i did relent and got a gsd, well she is my daughters she saved up for her,but the best thing i can say is when a new person comes to club and they say to me oh is this merlin i have heard so much about him everybody says he is so gentle and nice and then they get the rottie greeting,lean on the person and then talk in only a way a rottie can,thats my boy.
Carol

Lol@the Rottie having a look and seeing he wasn't needed!

I know where my fear of GSD's has come from - as a child my elder sister had a GSD cross who used to go MAD whenever we went to her house - just at me - and had to be put away in another room because he would just go barmy if I was there.  Then at approximately 8 years old I was chased by one on a potato farm- my dad had gone across the huge yard to get the potatoes whilst I stayed in the car, then being a typical child I got bored waiting while he chatted and got out to go and join my dad.  All of a sudden one of the two GSD's who had been dozing in the back of a trailer, jumped out and started full pelt across the yard - naturally I turned straight around and began running back towards the car.  It was all very well my dad and the Farmer yelling "stand still, stand still", I was 8 years old and a GSD was tearing after me barking, I wasn't going to stand still for anybody!  Eventually the farmer called his dog, who stopped dead in his tracks and went back (now why couldn't he have done that sooner!).  Thank god the owner had perfected the art of recall!

From that time on, I was scared of virtually all dogs - we took in my Uncle's Westie when he died, sometime around that time, maybe earlier, and although he was always good with me, he was going for children all the time and was becoming a real risk so after about 6 weeks we realised he couldn't stay with us.  This again enforced in my mind that dogs are nasty creatures that bite and go for people.  Plus my dad was a Postman, and consequently suffered a few bites in his time. If it wasn't for my sister's lovely Yorkshire Terriers who I visited often I would have really developed a dog fear.  As it was, dogs always had to be put away when I visited people's houses (except the Yorkies), and the fear stayed with me as I grew older, although it improved greatly as I grew older naturally.

Then at 15/16 I had a friend with two gorgeous labradors, and as I used to stay at her house most weekends, would mean I was sharing my bed with these two great lumps and I loved them to death. Eight years ago, my sister got a Westie and this really changed everything for me.  Here was a dog, that I would trust implicitly - if you ask for a kiss, he nibbles your ear.  If you had told me when I was younger that I would ever lay down for a dog to put his teeth around my ear I would have told you you were kidding me!  So as an adult, I learnt that dogs aren't scary, nasty creatures but are lovely companions (in the right hands!) and my fear of dogs went - except for GSD's.  In Scotland, around six years ago, there was a GSD on the grounds where our cottage was that 'went' for my sister's Westie.  A few years after that, another one went for him over the park near where he lives.  I am terrified of my OH's Aunt's GSD (so naturally they make a big point of bringing him in from the garden once I'm inside, and making him sit next to me for me to stroke him and see how lovely he is).  Gah! Why do people do that!  Dog's can smell fear, i know that, by making me sit with a dog I'm scared of only panics me even more!  A few years ago he went for my OH at the door as we arrived and jumped up at him angrily....I haven't been back since!

I know they're not 'evil' dogs, but I do know that they are guard dogs, and I can't help being scared of them.  The Rottie thing is new really, I never really saw many Rotties until I moved here, prior to that you would see one once in a blue moon plodding along amicably next to its owner.  obviously I wouldn't run up to it overcome with excitement, but you can see from the way they 'plod' that they're not a danger to be walking past!  But since I've moved here, to a neighbourhood where there are at least 3 in the close vicinity particularly this one that jumps up on to its six foot wall snarling at everyone who walks past, the fear is starting.  The last time I walked past that one's garden, I freaked, got home and couldn't get my breath back for at least an hour afterwards and I haven't walked past that way since.  The same day I walked to the corner shop with my OH and was telling him what had happened, when a Rottie jumped up on the (low) garden wall of the house level with us that we were passing (on the other side).  I screamed in the street which was rather embarrasing, but it was just bad timing that I was talking about my terrifying experience earlier.  This dog was with his owner and he looked at us and laid back down to sleep but it scared me nonetheless. 

This second Rottie is the one who's owners I have been chatting to lately.  I told them about my fear and that I should probably come and meet him one day (after they told me he lives with a 16 yr old Yorkie who is the boss!) and that it would probably be good for Millie to meet him/her too but they said "oh no, he/she'd be okay with you but he'd eat her alive!".  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!  no wonder I'm scared!

Oh and I just remembered, since I've told my sister about the Rottie fear I now have, she manages every time to tell me the story about her two friends who had two Rotties.  When she and her husband visited, they used to have to put the dogs out, get my sister and OH in, sit them at the dining table, against the wall, then push the table up against them and sit the other side before they let the dogs in.  Then they weren't allowed to make any sudden movements the whole time.  One day there was a commotion in the garden and their friends ran out to have a look.  They came back ten minutes later to find my sister and her OH paralysed with fear in their seats up against the wall with two big snarling Rotties half up on the table snarling and growling at their faces!

Thanks for that, sister!

i have a rott and he is the most dopey of dogs. he enjoys his household chores with me, with that i mean he follows me everywhere even when i'm vacuming the stairs he has to be on the same step as me licking my ear all the way , even as i type he's next to me. i have two children the youngest is two and he loves them to bits. they are gentle giants. my friend has a gsd and again she is "mrs i'm happy to have my belly rubbed allday". 

Sorry GSD's are not guard dogs by breeding. They are shepherds ie they are a breed originally used to work sheep & cattle. They are used as guard dogs yes but they are not a guarding breed

The guarding breeds are the mastiffs, dobermanns etc that are in the working group(except the Great Danes which are historically a Boar Hound) & they were historically breed to guard their owners & properties

I always have a wry smile when people describe mongrels & X breeds as GSD X's My old girl who died last year at 19 was described by a vet as a Collie x GSD-even tho she was only 14 inches at the shoulder a very small collie must have been in her breeding(she was a mongrel0.

The worse dogs that have come to me as problem dogs apart from the previously mentioned GSD have all been badly bred/owned/reared labradors usually black or chocolate. Some with decidedly iffy temperaments

The way to overcome a phobia like yours is to get professional help & use puppies not adult dogs(although my big GSD girl acts like a puppy & rolls upside down when people talk to her for tummy tickles too). I had a lovely old boy who I used once people with dogs phobias could accept a "teenager"dog. He would be happy to sit & for the person to approach at their own speed & he always brought people round being a teddy bear(but was not a long coat)with eyes that reflected his very gentle soul. I know everyone tells people not to look into a dogs eyes directly, but he could hold people entranced by his very open expression. He was a very very dark black & gold dog, who also did breed & obedience

See there you go, the problem dogs you have known are labs, which in my mind would be the big dogs that I would trust - which just goes to show there's no rational reasoning for my fear, and I know its my mind that's the problem, not the dogs.

Sorry for using the word 'guard', but you know what I mean - people do use them to guard their property, even if that's not what they are bred for, but generally you'll find businesses, building sites, and homeowners who do buy GSD's to sit outside all day and deter unwanted types.  Where I used to live, my next door neighbour had a Mastiff, who was in the garden all day, behind a gate, right next to the side entrance to my house (the entrance we used), and he was lovely - whilst I would never stick my hand through his gate, I would always say hello to him, he was a lovely dog and I was never afraid walking up my path the way I would have been if it was a Rottie or GSD - which goes to show again, that it is irrational why I am afraid because I should have been afraid of him!  Although it could be because he knew me and was happy with my coming and going.

I totally agree that I need puppy experience to get over my fear.  I would own a GSD without fear, because I would get it from a puppy and consequently wouldn't be afraid (I have no plans to, especially with my 'phobia', so don't worry, I mean hypothetically, that I wouldn't be afraid of a dog I had known from a puppy), its the adult dogs that worry me, because I don't know their personality, their past history or their owner etc.

We start puppy socialisation classes tonight, so I am hoping that there are some GSD's and Rottie puppies there, so that I will be getting extra benefit from the classes as well as Millie!