We have an eight year-old 120 pound American female. She should be 110 pounds and is on a diet to get her back where she needs to be. We got her when I was seven months pregnant with our first child. At that time we had a 5 year-old female cocker/mutt in the house. That cocker died about five years ago and was replaced by a male full breed cocker (worst mistake I ever made… I should have gotten another Rottweiler). The rottie got on/gets on well with both dogs.
The rottie has been raised with our two girls (who are now 5 and 7 years-old) as a member of the household. She has never been trained to be a guard dog, but it is in her nature to protect which she has and does even with arthritis in her front right leg and hip dysplasia.
I was apprehensive getting her at first because I had never had big dogs growing up. However, the husband was raised with Rottweilers and always wanted one, so I relented. I now love that dog almost as much as my kids. She is a great companion (currently snoring at my side as I type this) and a terrific protector. We are on our seventh deployment together, and she never leaves my side. She has been great with both our girls and has never snipped or snapped at either of them (something I cannot say about the freaking cocker). The Rottweiler has put up with them using her as a pillow, brushing her, dressing her up, playing with her ears (rottie ears are the softest thing ever), and generally treating her like another kid in the house. I am not sure if it is because they were all raised together or just indicative of the breed, but those three are peas in a pod.
I will admit that she almost didn’t make it through her puppydom with us. She chewed up a sofa, drywall, the husband’s NYFD hat, shoes, sunglasses, etc. We got her every teething item we could find, tried every trick the vet gave us, and she still tore through the house chewing things up. Although this is indicative of puppies from almost any breed, when you are dealing with a dog the size of a Rottweiler the damage is magnified. In the end, I decided to let her live and was glad that I did. If we get another one (which I am day dreaming about), it will be when the husband will be home to help train the new dog.
As for protection she is great. We had another Rottweiler go after our cocker (in defense of the other Rottweiler, the cocker did start the fight by trying to display dominance over a dog three times his size thus confirming my assessment that cockers are not the smartest dogs) and our Rottweiler jumped in to get the strange dog off the cocker. I have only seen her bare teeth at humans a handful of times and each time was when a stranger tried to put their hands on my child or was somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. She patrols the house at night and will not stand for closed doors. She wants to roam and check on everything and has learned to open doors to do that. She hates being in a crate and tore up her nose pretty bad as a puppy tearing her way out of the one we tried to use with her. Since then, we just used a dog bed on the floor between our bed and the wall which keeps her happy. When she is in trouble, I will tell her to go to her room, and she knows to go lay on her bed.
Honestly with the exception of her snoring (to which I have grown accustom) and the hefty vet bills we will have as she goes through her geriatrics (I echo what others have said about insurance with Rottweilers it is worth the money), I have absolutely no complaints about our Rottweiler.
ETA: Looking at the link with the puppies is making me want to get another one now
