Is is possible for a husky to be a good guard dog?

You can't expect any dog, regardless of the breed, to be able to accurately and reliably recognize who is 'safe' (like the worker) and who is an intruder. This is why even highly trained personal protection dogs only attack when given the cue by their handler. If you leave a dog to decide for themselves who they need to protect you/the house against, you're taking a huge risk that they'll go after an innocent party - a relative they've never met coming to visit, teenagers cutting through the yard, emergency personnel trying to get into your house to give life-saving medical treatment... you can see how that can go really badly. And it might land you in legal trouble too, depending on the laws where you live.

So it's a good thing your dog doesn't feel the need to attack anyone. More good news is that having a dog - especially a larger dog - will deter many criminals from even attempting to target you/your house. Most aren't willing to take the risk that the dog will make a lot of noise and alert you/the neighbors, or that they'll get bit, even if the dog seems friendly.

What you can do is train your dog to bark when he sees people on the property. Even if he's wagging his tail and super happy while doing it, a barking dog is going to be more intimidating, and it will alert you that someone's nearby so you can take action, whether that's telling your dog that everything's fine or calling the authorities.

No, they're not really known for it, though most dogs will bark when a stranger approaches the house, and mostly the barking dog is enough of a deterrent. If your dog typically reacts with friendliness toward strangers, that's not likely to change. If you really wanted to, I suppose you could teach him to bark at people like Daysleepers suggested.

Having a dog that will attack "intruders" on sight is a huge liability and an even bigger responsibility. The instances where a person innocently accesses your property (package delivery, service personnel, power company, or even a person who has the wrong address and steps up to your front door to knock!) far outnumber the times someone is likely to try to rob you! If you want that kind of dog, you better make absolutely 100% certain that nobody can access the property without you unlocking something. I don't think there are many countries that wouldn't at least label a dog as dangerous and likely put it down if the guy laying your cables accessed your property and was attacked by your dog!

No Siberian huskies do not make good "attack dogs". They do help deter criminals from entering your property just by their mere existence, but they are not naturally aggressive towards people and rarely succeed in training for it.

Siberian_Husky said:

I think you are right. People like paramedics should be able to get into my house if necessarly, however, In 99% of democratic countries, as long as someone is on my property uninvited I have the right to defend me, no matter if that person actually wanted to steal or not.

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Defending yourself or your family, home, etc, is different than having a dog that attacks people.

"Uninvited" is not actually accurate either. In many places, it is not considered tresspass unless you have posted no tresspassing signs and/or have specifically told the person they are not welcome on your property. Simply walking up to your door does not necessarily equate to the right to defend yourself. And most stand your ground, castle doctrines, etc, only apply if the tresspasser has or is attempting to enter your dwelling - not simply entering your land.

With that, as others have mentioned, having a dog that attacks is a huge responsibility and can create liability issues.

If the dog attacks someone walking in through a gate, then it may choose to attack if someone touches or approaches the gate, but doesn't enter the property and that makes you liable.

If the dog attacks someone who broke down and simply approached your home to ask for assistance, you could be held liable.

If the dog attacks a young child, emergency personnel, law enforcement, etc, you could be held liable.

And, if law enforcement has legal permission (ie, probable cause, search warrant, etc) to enter your property and the dog attacks, they very often have the right to shoot the dog then and there.

Gun control in the US is a highly controversial and politicised topic. You have four posts in a row talking about gun violence and gun control in the US. If you weren't aware this was a political topic, that's fine, but I expect there to be no more public posts on the matter. If you have further questions feel free to contact any of the mods by private message.

Talking about laws surrounding guard dog/human aggressive dog ownership is, of course, fine.

For context, I'm American and have lived in several East coast states, including one major city. While many US states do have strong self-defense and property-defense laws, even those only allow the use of deadly force if there is a clear threat to life or property. Someone trespassing by, for example, taking a shortcut through a yard might be breaking the law, but isn't a threat. If a dog attacks them because they're 'intruders' in its eyes, the owner will most likely have a lawsuit on their hands, and the dog will be subjected to whatever the local dangerous dog laws are, depending on the severity of the attack and other factors (like size, breed, history of biting or threatening behavior, etc.).

There are also some circumstances where a dog can be considered a deadly weapon, so if a handler allows or commands a dog to someone (whether the dog is a trained protection dog or not), and it's later found that the handler was not acting in self defense, they could be charged with assault with a deadly weapon or even (in the worst case scenario) second degree murder.

In Norway, where I now live, dogs trained to attack for any reason are banned, as are dogs who are "particularly aggressive, combative or [have] other highly undesirable qualities or behaviour which make them a potential danger for humans or animals." So you can imagine that a private citizen training or encouraging a dog to attack people for any reason is a bad idea here (police and military dogs are exceptions).

In the UK, a dog is considered 'dangerously out of control' and can be classified as a dangerous dog under the Dangerous Dog Act if someone even feels worried that the dog might injure them. There is legal defense if the dog attacks someone who breaks into a house, but not if someone breaks into just the garden.

So that's what I mean when I say you really need to know your local laws if you ever plan on having a dog that attacks people for any reason, whether it's a trained behavior or a case of human aggression. Many countries do not consider it legally acceptable for a dog to attack a human outside of extreme cases of clear and present danger, which means that attack dogs aren't worth the liability for most people in most situations. It may well be different in Romania, I honestly don't know.

DaySleepers said:

taking a shortcut through a yard might be breaking the law

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I think in America many of you have unenclosed yard, which is not the case where I live, we have very tall, sometimes barbed wire fences which looks like a military base fence, so clearly if someone is struggling to climb the fence doesn't want to take a shortcut. Most of the robbers are not murderers and will try to steal unnoticed without threating the victim's life, so you are right, I would probable get sued by the robber's family if he would get killed or hurt while stealing from my house, however sometimes you might encounter murderers or even psychopaths that don't even want to steal, just want to murder. What I'm trying to say is that I live in a very isolated neighborhood. I would feel a lot safer knowing I have in yard a fierce dog that is able to rip the face of an intruder(nowadays we keep dogs as pets, however I think one of the main reasons humans needed dogs in the past was for their fangs and claws, either for hunting animals or defending from other humans). Or, I would feel safer to have a gun. I understand that husky aren't the dogs for that, anyway I bought a dog to keep it as a pet not a guard dog, it was just a second bonus of owning a dog.

As I said, the liability of a human aggressive dog or a guard dog isn't worth it to MOST people in MOST circumstances. You can decide for yourself if it's worth it for you, personally, but you do have to know the local laws and regulations to make that judgement call.

If you want to have a human aggressive dog that attacks suspicious strangers, you have to assume it will potentially attack any strangers, including people like workers and paramedics who are on your property for valid reasons (or people who are on your property for questionably legal but non-threatening reasons). It's also your responsibility to manage such a dog safely, which includes an extra secure yard (yes, a tall fence is a good start, but more measures like double fencing or extra locks may be warranted as well) and keeping it on-leash and muzzled in public spaces.

If you have a trained protection dog, you have to know the legal requirements for keeping them - do you have to put up warning signs, register them with a specific registry, never allow them to be off-leash or unsupervised in public spaces, etc. A trained protection dog shouldn't, ideally, attack without being ordered to, and they're usually trained to hold a person rather than maul them, but they're not robots and mistakes happen, so you still need to consider what will happen if they attack the wrong person.

And in either case, it's not just the monetary issues with lawsuits, but the fact that a dog who 'rips the face off' of the wrong person may well be ordered to be euthanized for being a dangerous animal. I know that would be the case in the US and Norway, anyway.