The Short Answer

What A Protection Dog Consultation Is For

A first call is a two-way screening. The seller is working out whether a dog belongs in your house at all. You are working out whether they select dogs or simply move them. Nothing is bought on it.

That framing matters because most people arrive at this call braced for a sales pitch, and then find themselves being interviewed instead. It feels backwards until you notice what it means: matching is the entire product. The dog is not a configuration you order. It is a specific animal with a temperament, and the question on the table is whether that temperament and your household can live together for a decade. Nobody can answer that without asking about you first.

It also means the call is duller than you expect. There is no demonstration on a phone and no number that means anything yet. What there is, when it goes well, is somebody asking specific questions about a house they have never seen while you ask specific questions about a dog you have never met. We sell these dogs, so weigh this page accordingly. It is written to make your first call to anybody a better one.

Their Half

Eight Things You Should Be Asked

A seller who does not ask these is not matching a dog to you. Nobody can place an animal into a household they have not asked about, and the questions below are how that assessment actually happens. If a first call skips all of it and goes straight to what is available and how soon, you are not in a consultation. You are in a queue.

Who actually lives in the house: Not the number of people — the composition. Ages, hours, who is home in the day, who comes and goes without warning, whether anyone in the house did not want this. A dog is placed into a household, and the household is the thing being assessed. A seller who never asks is selling into a vacuum, and finds out what was in it when you call three months later.
Which one person is going to handle it: A trained dog attaches to whoever works it, not to whoever paid. Expect to be pushed on this, and expect the push to be uncomfortable if the honest answer is “we all will.” If the person named is not on the call, a serious seller will want them on the next one. This is the first of the six disqualifiers we set out in our guide on whether you should buy one at all.
What the property is like: Fencing and its height, gates and who has keys, whether the yard is shared, how the dog gets out at 6am, how deliveries reach the door, how far the nearest neighbour is, whether there are stairs or a pool. A dog that is fine on ten acres is a different management problem in a townhouse with a shared alley.
What specifically worries you: The useful version is not “do you feel unsafe.” It is what happened, when, how often, and whether it is over. A named ongoing situation is a different purchase from a general unease, and the second is usually better answered by a locksmith. Expect to be asked whether anything has been reported, because that changes what a dog can honestly do about it.
What dogs you have owned, and what happened to them: Previous dogs tell a seller more than any statement of intent. Not whether you loved them — how they lived. Did they have rules that held. Were they trained past sitting. Did any get rehomed, and why. None of it disqualifies a first-time owner, but a first-time owner and a green adult Malinois is a combination worth knowing about before it is on a plane.
Children, and other people’s children: Ages matter less than traffic. A ten-year-old with four friends in and out of the house every afternoon is a busier management problem than a toddler. Expect questions about supervision, about who opens the front door, and about the birthday-party version of your house rather than the ordinary Tuesday version.
Other animals in the house: Dog-to-dog tolerance is an individual trait, not a breed setting, and cats and livestock are a separate question again. This is one of the few areas where the honest answer can be that a particular dog is wrong for you and another one is fine — which is only possible if somebody asks first.
How much you travel, and who takes the dog: Not every kennel will board a dog with bite training, and the offer from a family member to watch your dog changes when the dog is this one. A seller asking about your travel is asking about a real failure mode: dogs that lose their training in the gaps, and owners who discover the boarding problem the week before a trip.

Several of those exist to surface the same six situations set out in our guide on whether you should buy a protection dog at all. Notice what is not on the list: a breed. Which of the three breeds we work with suits a household is an outcome of the answers above rather than a starting point, and the differences between a Malinois, a Dutch Shepherd and a German Shepherd matter far less than the individual dog does.

Your Half

What To Ask Back On The Call

This is not the vetting list. Where the dog came from, what title it holds, what the contract says and what the deposit is refundable until are due diligence, and they have a page of their own. The five below are the ones that only work live — who is on the other end of the phone, how this particular seller decides, and what the dog would ask of you every week once it is in the house.

Who Am I Actually Talking To?

Ask it early and ask it plainly: are you the person who has trained this dog, or does somebody else do that? There is nothing wrong with a business where one person answers the phone. There is something wrong with buying a dog without ever having spoken to whoever has had hands on it. If the trainer is somebody else, ask when you get them on a call — the answer to that tells you where you sit in their week.

What Has It Actually Been Trained To Do?

Ask for behaviours, not a tier. “Level two” is vendor shorthand that no organisation defines, which is why we wrote out what those descriptions are supposed to mean. Does it out on the first command, every time, from a decoy still moving? Does it hold a down while you talk to somebody? Has it worked in a parking lot, a lobby, a lift? The answers are either specific or they are marketing.

What Else Do You Need To Know Before You Name A Dog?

Turn the interview around and ask what is still missing. A seller who is matching will list things: the other adult on the next call, the handler on the phone, video of the property, a conversation about your travel, sometimes a visit. Somebody ready to name a specific dog before knowing any of that is matching you to what is in the kennel rather than the other way round. It is also the polite way to find out whether there is a dog for you at all right now, which is a better thing to learn on a phone call than a month from now.

What Happens Between This Call And A Dog Arriving?

Ask for the sequence out loud, with rough timings: what the next conversation is, whether you go and watch dogs work or somebody comes to you, when a specific dog gets named, what the handover looks like, how many days of instruction come with it, and who is standing in your kitchen on the first morning. You are listening for whether there are stages in the answer at all, and for how much of it happens before rather than after you have committed to anything.

What Will You Need Me To Do Every Week?

Protection work is a perishable skill and the maintenance is the part buyers consistently underestimate. Ask what the daily obedience actually looks like, how often the dog needs work with a decoy, who provides that where you live, and what it costs. Then ask what happens in month four when you have skipped three weeks — the honest answer is that the dog gets worse, which is what the first ninety days are really about.

Then run the other check, which is a different conversation with a different purpose: provenance, what title the dog holds and who issued it, hip and elbow reports and the unsigned contract are set out as nine questions in our guide to protection dog scams and red flags. Four of the answers you will get are subjects in themselves: the tier language is taken apart in protection dog levels 1, 2 and 3, what a title certifies is in sport titles versus real protection, what to watch when you do get to see the dog worked is in how to read a demo, and the equipment question few sellers answer straight is in will the dog bite without a suit.

The Wrong First Question

Why “How Much Is A Dog” Comes Last

It is the first thing almost everybody asks and the one question a first call cannot usefully answer. Not because sellers are being coy — though some are — but because the words “fully trained protection dog” cover animals that differ from each other more than a hatchback differs from a truck. Age, how much of the training is genuinely finished, whether it holds in a parking lot two states away, where the dog came from, what it has done under pressure: each moves the number, and none is known on a call that has not asked about you yet.

We publish no price, deliberately, and our pricing page explains why at length — along with what the market actually charges, where the enormous headline figures in press coverage come from, and what the recurring costs look like after the purchase. Our FAQ already sets out what is included in a placement and what is not, and it says plainly that we quote per dog, on a call, once we know what you need. You should read both before you talk to anyone, so that you are comparing offers rather than numbers.

Then ask the three questions that give you a comparable figure. What is included — dog, training, testing, delivery, instruction, guarantees, support? A finished dog is a bundle, and two quotes can differ by tens of thousands because one contains half as much. What is excluded and billed later? And what does year two cost, every year, regardless of day one — food, vet care, boarding that is harder to find for a dog like this, equipment, and maintenance work with a decoy.

One more worth asking out loud: what would make this dog cheaper. The honest answers are age, an unfinished stage of training, or a dog whose provenance is thinner than the others in the kennel. If the honest answer for your household turns out to be a younger dog you raise and finish with guidance rather than a finished adult, that is a different program with a different cost, and it exists for a reason.

Sometimes It Ends Here

A Good First Call Can End In No

Say it plainly, because almost nobody here does: a first conversation can and should sometimes end with the seller telling you not to buy a dog. That is a normal outcome rather than a failed one, and it runs both ways — you may decide on the call that the answer is no, and you owe nobody an explanation for it.

We have already published the six situations where the answer is usually no — nobody in the household wanting to be the handler, wanting a deterrent rather than a dog, shopping in the week after a fright, a schedule with no room in it. Every one of them surfaces on a first call if the questions above get asked, which is exactly why they get asked. The full argument for walking away is a whole guide, and it names the cheaper things to buy instead.

A no is often narrower and more useful than a rejection. Not this dog, that one. Not now — call back when the fence is up, when the youngest is older, when you have done six months of obedience with the dog you already own. If the call never narrows toward a particular dog and never once slows down, you are not being matched — you are being sold whatever is standing in the kennel that week.

The test to run on the person you are talking to is one question: what kind of household would you refuse to sell this dog to? Anybody who selects seriously has a real answer ready, with examples in it, because they have had to give it before. Watch what happens when the answer is vague.

Come Prepared

What To Have Ready Before You Dial

Half of what makes a first call useless is that the buyer has not yet answered these for themselves. Spend twenty minutes on the list below and the call gets shorter, more specific, and much harder for anybody to fill with atmosphere.

The handler’s name, and their agreement out loud. Not the household — the person who will do the work.
What worries you, written down with dates. Two sentences of specifics beats twenty minutes of atmosphere.
A description of the property: fencing, gates, yard, neighbours, how deliveries arrive, where the dog would sleep.
Your household in plain terms — who lives there, ages, hours, other animals, and anyone who is uneasy about this.
Your travel pattern for the next year, and the name of the person or kennel who would take the dog.
What your insurance carrier said when you called them, which is a call to make before this one rather than after.
The ten minutes. Point at the actual slot in your actual weekday when training is going to happen.
The searches you have already run on whoever you are calling. The FTC advises searching a seller’s name alongside words like “review,” “scam,” or “complaint” before you engage.
Your questions, on paper. Enthusiasm on a phone call reliably eats the list you meant to ask.

That research advice is the FTC’s, from its consumer alert on avoiding scams when getting a pet, read on 8 September 2026 — the same page carries its unqualified rule on payment methods, quoted in full in our guide to protection dog scams. Make the insurance call first, too: a policy can exclude the dog for what it was trained to do rather than for its breed, which is worked through in protection dogs and homeowners insurance.

What Happens Next

A Real Next Step Versus Pressure

The end of the call is where the transaction reveals its shape. What you are listening for is whether the next step gives you more information or takes more commitment.

A Real Next Step

An invitation to come and see dogs work, with no money attached to the visit. A document to read. A request that the other adult in your household join the next call. A specific dog described with its history, or an honest “we do not have the right dog for you right now.” All of these have one thing in common: they cost you nothing and they buy you information.

Pressure Wearing A Reason

A deposit deadline that appeared during the call. Another buyer flying in tomorrow whose name cannot be given. A price that expires. A contract that arrives after the money. None of these are automatically dishonest — good dogs do sell, and scarcity is real — but every one of them is testable, and what you are testing is whether the urgency survives a question.

The Test That Costs Nothing

Say you want a week. Not because you need one, but because the reaction is free information and you can only collect it before you pay. A seller confident in their dog will use the week to send you more: video, records, a scorebook page, a name to call. A seller who needs the deposit this week will tell you why the week is a problem.

Second Opinions Are Normal

Call two or three programs and ask all of them the same list. The differences between the answers teach you more than any single conversation, and anyone selling a good dog has been compared before. If a seller is irritated that you are talking to anybody else, you have learned something for the price of one phone call.

The deposit structures worth stopping for, and how the pressure usually arrives dressed as a reason, are set out in protection dog scams and red flags. The short version: nothing that costs you money should happen on a first call, and nothing you cannot read should be signed after one.

Before You Say Anything

What You Can Ask About Discretion

You can call and ask questions without giving your name, which is worth knowing before you decide how much to put in a web form. Everything a seller needs in order to match a dog to you is eventually going to be personal — where you live, who is in the house, what happened — so ask the confidentiality questions while you are still anonymous rather than after you have typed it all out.

Four questions do most of the work. Who reads an inquiry, by name, and who else in the business sees it? Is there a mailing list, a CRM, an ad platform, or anything that retargets me after this call? Will I ever be named, photographed or quoted as a client, and does that require my written permission? And if I do not buy, what happens to what I told you — is it deleted if I ask?

Ours are answered in writing on our privacy and discretion page, which names who reads an inquiry, states that we do not name clients without a yes in writing, and discloses the thing almost no site discloses: that pressing the phone number or the email address here sends us a short notification, and exactly what is in it — including the approximate location our host supplies. It exists because the form asks families to describe their household, and asking for that without saying where it goes seemed wrong.

If you would rather none of it be written down at all, do not use the form. Call instead. A good number of these conversations start that way, and no seller worth buying from will find it strange.

Who You Are Calling

Start With This Call

Everything above is what a first conversation should feel like from both sides, so the fair test is whether ours survives it. Ask us who has evaluated the dog besides us, and the answer starts with a credential you can check without our help: both owners are listed decoys at PSA-sanctioned trials — the decoy being the person in the suit who takes the bite — and the clubs, cities and dates are published on our story to be held against PSA’s own calendar. Both of us are also on camera in who we are and how we pick a dog, describing what we select for and why every dog lives in one of our own homes first, and there is twenty seconds of a Dutch Shepherd holding a down-stay at a live downtown intersection while its handler stops paying attention to it.

When We Publish Something Worth Reading

No sequence, no drip, nothing automated. One email when we have written something a buyer would actually use — which is a handful of times a year, not a handful of times a month. Leave and we stop.

When You Are Ready

Make It A Specific Conversation

Bring the list, bring the household, and bring the question you think is rude to ask — it is usually the one worth asking. If the call ends with us telling you not to buy a dog, that is a working process rather than a lost sale and you owe us nothing for the conversation. More detail on cost, upkeep and terminology is in our FAQ, and the rest of these guides are on the guides index.

Start The Conversation Call (945) 900-1540