[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
[quote]PonceDeLeon wrote:
I’m well aware of that and didn’t mean that they could. I doubt anyone would buy that shit anyway. Just threw it out there because it “sounded” bad ass. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t do more than just distract a lion from attacking a poacher/hunter.
What dogs do you own or train, out of curiosity? Not challenging you, just asking.[/quote]
I’ve bred american pitbull terriers for 15 years now. I use them to hunt wild boar down South. Within the last 5 years, I’ve started hunting small game with patterdale terriers locally (raccoon, fox, groundhog, etc.). Patterdales and the smaller game terriers are amazing animals.
We ask them to go down a tight, dark, tunnel and engage whatever is down there and stay engaged until we can dig down to them and extract them. Imagine being asked to go down a dark tunnel and engage whatever is down there waiting for you, in the dark, with no room to move, until whenever (some digs are very easy, others very difficult). They are simply amazing dogs when you get a good one. I’ve owned two dogo argentinos too.
Lions aside (and probably large bear), 
there is no tougher game that a dog will actually be expected to engage and fight than a wild boar. Now, I’ve never hunted lion with dogs (or big bear) but I can pretty much guarantee you that their role is not to actually “catch” and “engage” the big game. I’m pretty sure they locate, and maybe distract, until the hunter can shoot the game.
Some of the medium size cats that some breeds CAN engage cannot hold up to any appreciable punishment - dogos actually hunt puma/mountain lion in Argentina and they actually engage and fight the cat. A medium size cat can dole out some decent punishment, but is usually no match for a good dog. In contrast, a good sized boar is damn near impossible for a dog or pack of dogs to kill and can easily kill a dog or dogs. The are built like tanks and are VERY smart. If they’ve been hunted by dogs before (and survived) they learn how to fight and evade the dogs.
Believe it or not, a well schooled monkey (a monkey that has encountered a dog before) can probably kill most dogs and would be one of the toughest “game” a dog could hunt, assuming it was legal. There are accounts of old (when it was legal) of Jocko the Monkey being matched against various pit dogs and being very adept at killing them. By the way, I wasn’t directing my prior comment at you per se, just the Rhodesian taking down lions comment which is a common belief you hear going around whenever the subject comes up.
And as with any working breed (Rhodesian included), you’d probably be hard pressed to get an actual dog off of hunting stock…I don’t know much about Rhodesians but I’d bet my left nut that what’s mostly available is probably show stock and far removed from big game hunting. That means you’re lucky to get one that would kill a house cat
My first dog ever (right after high school) was a doberman pincher but I don’t talk about that LOL. It was a completely uninformed decision, buying a dog like most people unfortunately choose a dog. It was bad ass (at the time and so I thought), I liked the way they looked (terrible reason to buy a dog), they had a reputation for being “this and that”, I knew virtually nothing of the breeder except for an ad and their marketing, I knew nothing of the parents and pedigree, I knew nothing of picking the actual puppy, I thought I had a dog that would “protect” the house and family, etc. etc.
In the end, I got a nervous, high strung dog (unfortunately common for the breed and what was out there at the time), that would probably bite, but only out of fear, that used to regularly wreck the house (pull up and chew rugs, linoleum, etc.), had separation anxiety, etc. but I loved him and thought he was a decent dog just the same (he was not) because I was prone to the same romantic ideas and anthropomorphism most pet people fall prey to. The dog was nuts and a terrible family pet and was destructive. But I fooled myself into thinking he was a good dog.
At the end of the day, this terrible example of a dog was adequate to “protect” the family home. He would certainly alert to strangers and bark and I strangers readily believed he would bite. I did at the time live in a very bad neighborhood when he was a younger dog and never suffered a break in - again, the deterrent factor I spoke of earlier.
End rant
A pet person can be forgiven for doing this, but it’s a trap. We tend to bond with our dogs, and we love them. Hence, we like to forgive their shortcomings or make excuses for them. In the case of the big powerful dogs, this can be a very costly mistake. A working dog person can fall prey to the same trap, but are much more likely to evaluate a dog without too much bias.
After all, you give a dog a job, he can either do that job or not. How well a dog does its job is subjective and in the eyes of the owner and of course, there can be bias there too. The best working dog owners have zero bias and simply evaluate their dogs against the vocation and make decisions on breeding and/or keeping a dog accordingly.
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You are correct lion dogs like ridgebacks are trackers more than anything.
If you haven’t had a donavan you would probably like one, Dom usually has a garranter with good breedings too. IF they don’t have the drive you are looking for or back down you can exchange. A few years back Dom had a kennel out near where I live and I started going there quite a bit got to see his donavan’s in action.
