i was wondering when it comes to temperment in dogs, hwo much is really down to breed compared to management.
if you had 2 diffrent breed pups, say a GSD and  poodle. and you brought htem up exactly the same way, woudlk you expect them to behave and be obedient equally?

the reason i ask this is becasue, my last dog was GSD. he had a bad start to life and as i was his 3rd hoem after coming from the breeder i really did not get to play a big part in his first experience of life. by the time i got him a lot of damage had been done. i manged to get him to be a lot more confident and less anxious but never more than 80%.

now i have a new puppy she is a 8 week old bull terier x lhasa apso/ and she is very bull headed. very detemined, very vocal and very sure of her self even at the age of 6 weeks. she is not a nasty pup, but i feel that with out firm fair handling she would /could be a bad tempered dog in the way that a weak natured handler may let her get away with too much.

she plays rougth with her teddys and the other day i even saw her mount one of them. now from what i have heard that is dominant behaviour.

she is good with other dogs and cats but despite being very small she gives the impresson of not being phased by this and the other day while over a friends house she made it very clear to my friends adult dog that she did nto want to play any more by growling at him.

becaseu of her weird breeding it would be hard to predict what her temperment woudl be like if based on breed alone.

i knwo bull terriers can be difficlut, stubboprn hard to train dogs. but i knwo nothign about lhasa apsos.

what do you think?

It's more complicated than just breed or management - I have litter brothers who have totally different temperaments, and they're the same breed (naturally!) and have been reared identically.

I think if you understand your dogs basic character you can influence it so that you emphasise the desireable ande temper/mute the less desireable.

I ahve had two breeds, one requiring a maximum of input and work with early socialisation that needed constant reinforement to ahve a well balanced dog, and the other needing very a lot5 less, though the example I quoted shows that it still needed to be doen properly.

Interestingly the sire of the pup mentioned came into quarantine at 9 weeks, and yet after 6 months solitary confinement, with only mine and his other owners visits and that of kennel staff as socialisation, yet he coped with a show environment only 3 days after his release.  the only lasting scar I think is his ambivalence to car travel, he doesn't like it, but simply tolerates it. 

He was also a big puppy mentaly when he came out, and we had to remember this as you tended to expect more from him than his experience allowed, he was behind with social skills, housetraining etc.

Early training and habituation can ruin a good temperament, and can improve a less good one, but some traits are unborn.

my breed the Norwegian Elkhound for example is a fre thinking independatn hunting breed,a dn these traits are very apparent from birth.  Some of the less desrieable ones (from our point of view) can be tempered by training, but only tempered.

For example on walks my dogs will naturally range ahead, they have been trained to check back on me and their recalls ar not bad, but they are prone to throw a deaf un, especially if they see no valid reason for you calling them at that precise moment.  On the other hand if a park vehicle is approaching or I shout bike, or there is a real urgency in my tone get their attention pretty quick.

One of mine came back to me at adolescence, and another of my breding didn't get proper training with his expereinced owner(obedience competitor) until he was 5 months, both of these are not as trustworthy off lead as their count3erparts that were brought up with their owners from pups knowing that very early recall trainign was needed, before they were confident enough to disobey.

Now my own dogs are very sociable with people and other dogs, but they have been brought up that way.  Sadly one of my pups lives with a very neurotic older dog who had relied on her companion all her life and after it's death fell apart. 

Now this pup started refusing to walk down her road to where the traffic was as the older dog was frightened, but woudl still walk where led as she didn't ahve the gumption to resist, but the pup did.  I started taking both dogs out when she was five months as this had become a problem.  I couldn't beleive how introverted they were.  Over the next few weeks I had managed to get the older one to start interacting with people that stopped to speak and the younger one too, and had made headway with her digging ehr heels in and refusing to walk.

I couldn't understand why the owner didn't go to the shopping precinct where there are benches and let them watch the world go byu, but unfortunately teh owners are themselves very introverted, only go where it is quiet, are not kee to chat tio people etc, so sadly the headway I had made with the young bitch enjoying busy walks evaporated.   When I had her here in the summer walks for her were a penance.

Now of course she may have been aless outgoing personality anyway, but had she been reared in my home she woudl have been as bomb proof as they are.  Certainly she was a normal outgoing Elkie pup in the litter.