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HOW much for that dog? Wha … ? You’re kidding, right?
By Gina Spadafori
April 8, 2008
Double-take time: “Lifestyle Pets,” the outfit behind some very high-priced animals, has another offering for people who want … um … to spend money: A six-figure German shepherd:
LIFESTYLE PETS, the company that sells unique and rare pets that includes the first scientifically tested hypoallergenic cat and the exotic ASHERA feline, announces the availability of the TITAN Family Protector dog.
The TITAN Family Protector dog from LIFESTYLE PETS aims to provides a frontline deterrent to any criminal or harmful intent. Through the use of professionally and extensively trained German Shepherds, a TITAN Family Protector Dog provides an extra level of security where it is needed most. At the same time, the TITAN Family Protector is a friendly, lovable and loyal canine companion for all the family.
The company’s founder, Simon Brodie, is already seeing a demand for this unique type of dog, which has a waiting list exceeding six months: “The reality is that many families and individuals recognize the need for more extensive security measures. Many homes now incorporate state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to protect both family and property, but even with high-tech surveillance equipment in place, their home or family often requires additional peace of mind. That’s where the LIFESTYLE PETS TITAN Family Protector German Shepherd dog comes in.”
The price of a standard TITAN Family Protector German Shepherd is US$85,000. The rarer TITAN Protector Ultra, priced at US$120,000, is similar to the standard TITAN Family Protector but is certified to be breed from one of the world’s top champion German Shepherd bloodlines.
Continues Brodie: “These are exceptional dogs. One should consider that it takes two years to train a TITAN, which only begins once we have selected the best German Shepherds in the world.”
Included in the purchase of a TITAN Family Protector dog, in addition to the standard warranties and guarantees provided with all LIFESTYLE PETS animals, is worldwide delivery and a three day orientation/training session for the client by a certified TITAN Family Protector trainer.
The TITAN Family Protector now joins the company’s other pets, which include the ALLERCA GD hypoallergenic cat (priced between $6,000 and $31,000), the JABARI GD hypoallergenic dog (priced at $15,000) and different variations of the exotic ASHERA cat (priced between $22,000 and $130,000).
I’m without words, but I know some of you folks will not be, that’s for sure. For some interesting reading, Google the company founder and settle in for a while.
I know some of you work with protection dogs. Give us some perspective on what a fully trained police department K-9 runs these days.
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OR… you could come down to Senator Williams’ county kill shelter in SC and get one for free.
Comment by slt — April 8, 2008 @ 8:23 am
“The price of a standard TITAN Family Protector German Shepherd is US$85,000. The rarer TITAN Protector Ultra, priced at US$120,000, is similar to the standard TITAN Family Protector…”
Sounds more like a robot than a dog.
Comment by Christine — April 8, 2008 @ 9:17 am
A fool and their money….
Comment by 2CatMom — April 8, 2008 @ 9:29 am
As well as “there’s one born every minute . . . . “
Comment by The OTHER Pat — April 8, 2008 @ 9:48 am
well at least these are not likely to end up in the pound or roaming the neighborshood? just kidding of course. :-)
Comment by lost for words — April 8, 2008 @ 9:57 am
Up here in Canada, a professionally trained guard dog runs around $6,000 to $10,000.
These are certified dogs and I do know a few people who are well off, live in the country and want their families to be safe while they are at work.
I suppose the conspicuous nouveau-riche types would be the first on the block to acquire a status symbol such as the dogs you describe.
That would definitely not be me. My cranky old Wiener dog is more than adequate for my home protection needs :>)
Comment by Caveat — April 8, 2008 @ 10:01 am
Wow - this guy is shady!
Designer pets? It’s just too weird for me. I couldn’t, in good conscience, pay that kind of money for an animal when I know there are so many in shelters who need homes!
The other thing I wanted to see, and didn’t, on the Lifestyle website was how are these animals raised? There is very little information about the conditions, etc.
Comment by Tammy — April 8, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
My next door neighbour’s son and family imported a GSD from Germany. I believe they paid something like $15,000 for it, partly because it comes from champion lines, but more importantly because “it’s already trained”. These people have always impressed me with their lack of sense.
They were all out in the neighbour’s back patio when I came home from work one day last summer, and “Baron” was off-leash, patrolling the driveway. He looked Substantially Similar to a dangerous dog.
Comment by shibadiva — April 8, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
“The reality is”…some people have more money than they know what to do with.
Comment by C.L.H. — April 8, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
How downright dangerous.
Just because you can afford to pay xxxx amount of $’s cannot make you suitable for ownership.
Even the best trained dog in the world is still a *dog*, with it’s own personality and intellect. If the new owner is too weak for the dog they’ve now got, there can be major pack order issues. It doesn’t sound like there’s any screening of the new owners, other than the fact that the credit card cleared !
If you want a security/protection trained dog, I would have thought it far more rewarding to do it yourself, and learn with the dog.
I have a very sweet (now!) Rottie girl, who has not come up to show standard unfortunately (flying ears). I have thought about re-homing her if a suitable home came along, she’s 18 months now, so still young. But unless somebody was very experienced with the breed I wouldn’t let her go, and now of course I’m far too attached to even think about it. She was a very dominant puppy, who challenged both my husband and myself . Obviously she lost, and now she is as sweet as everybody else thinks, but she is *still* that same bossy little madam underneath, and eventually she would try anybody new out, if they didn’t recognise the challenge and deal with it appropriately, it would be the dog that lost out in the end.
They do indeed make these poor dogs sound like robots, what happens if they malfunction (get ill)?
German Shepherds are notorious for health problems anyway, to get one of these paragons of virtue as well as perfect health sounds too far fetched to me. The problem is they’re not robots, and you can’t just turn them off and wait until the service man comes and fixes them if you’re having problems.
I like to think my dogs will protect me because they love me, I know I’ll protect them because I love them.
Poor dogs is what I say.
Alison Woolley
Comment by Alison Woolley — April 8, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
Ten to twenty grand is a perfectly reasonable price to pay for an extremely well bred European import GSD who 1) has been extremely well trained, 2) has been socialized in the home and with children and animals, 3) has an excellent temperament, including very sound nerve, 4) has certified hips, elbows, and eyes, and 5) is in excellent health. Just for perspective: Replacing both hips in a dysplastic dog currently costs about $10,000 to $12,000.
Comment by Susan — April 8, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
I just looked at the lifestyle pets website, and they say the dogs are Schutzhund titled. I can comment on this, as I have trained in this sport. It is, specifically, a SPORT, and a dog doesn’t automatically generalize from the training field to the home. I know of trainers who get paid several thousand dollars to train other people’s dogs in this sport to SchH1. The cost doesn’t change if it takes more or less time to train, so the motivation for the trainer is to get the training done quickly. Quick training is done more easily using compulsion. Any dog with a lick of intelligence will realize that when he’s in a new home, new owner, the same rules don’t apply. If there’s no bond, no trust, there’s no control. Anyone who owns of these dogs should be aware of the additional liability they assume.
Comment by Margaret — April 8, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
At the bottom of the “six figure German Shepherd” press release linked above are listed two phone numbers, one in the US and one in Russia. What’s up with that?
The Lifestyle Pets website is very flash and slick. Don’t miss the the “Purchase” page. It’s creepy.
Ok, HSUS where are you? What the H… is going on here? And are there any actual live animals involved? Where are they? WHAT are they?
Comment by Susan Fox — April 8, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
If one wants a good family GSD, fully trained as a personal protection dog, that’ll cost $3000-15,000+. You don’t necessarily get a better dog at the higher prices. There are a lot of rip off sales to people who don’t know any better.
Fully trained dual purpose GSD police dogs cost around $10,000-15,000. There’s more training in these dogs than a family protector needs, and suitable dogs are a lot harder to find because the job is so demanding.
The LIFESTYLE PETS advertisement just screams rip off.
First, they are charging way more than excellent fully-trained family protector GSDs cost. Extremely high price doesn’t mean better dog. It means rip off.
Second, since the highest priced “TITAN Protector Ultra” is from the “world’s top champion German Shepherd bloodlines”… RUN AWAY. People who are serious about this get GSDs from working lines, not “champion” lines.
Third, people who are serious about selecting and training dogs for personal protection specialize in this kind of thing. If they advertise them along with other dogs, it will be dogs for serious protection sports or police work. They do not advertise them along with fru fru pets, let alone what are obviously ripoff hyper-expensive cats.
Comment by LauraS — April 8, 2008 @ 7:09 pm
One of his (alleged) non allergic cats doing protection work would be worth big money.
Then he would really have something.
Comment by nancy freedman-smith — April 9, 2008 @ 2:10 am
LauraS writes:
“Second, since the highest priced “TITAN Protector Ultra” is from the “world’s top champion German Shepherd bloodlines”… RUN AWAY. People who are serious about this get GSDs from working lines, not “champion” lines.”
Laura, I’m surprised at you! “RUN AWAY?!”
Why, you know as well as I do that a brisk walk will easily outdistance a “champion” line GSD offered for sale to a stupid American (or Japanese businessman, or Hong Kong broker, or Malaysian pimp, or any other foreign fool with a fat wallet).
That there is a Russian connection to this scam is alarming, but not surprising. Russia is currently milling massive numbers of English and French bulldogs for sale in the US — the pups are all over them there interwebs. They are spendy, but not even into five figures. The highest I’ve heard was about $6K for a flashy brindle English bulldog pup (prettier colors = markup).
I suspect this operation is buying young adult cull GSDs from Germans, doing some dubious “training” in dirt-cheap Russia, and shipping them to the US only when an order is placed.
Three days of owner training. That’s just great. Buy a pup from me for
Comment by H. Houlahan — April 9, 2008 @ 5:32 am
H.Houlahan posted: “Three days of owner training. That’s just great. Buy a pup from me for..”
I DID! And as I remember it, you stayed with us for about three days when you delivered the little killer to me. Girl, you aren’t charging nearly enough. Based on this, I believe that your price was off by at least two orders of magnitude ;-)
Comment by Janeen — April 9, 2008 @ 8:17 am
When somebody refers to “champion” bloodlines of GSDs, I take this to mean one of two things:
1) American/Canadian showline GSDs, or
2) German (international) showline GSDs.
American/Canadian showline GSDs are the poster child for a dog population that is utterly different from the original intent. They are useless for any breed-appropriate work. Of all the GSD populations, they are the LEAST suitable for the role of highly-trained family protector.
While most people point to the bizarre structure of American/Canadian GSDs, it is their loss of brain function that is the bigger problem. [the very rare throwback who can actually do demanding breed appropriate work proves nothing, BTW]
So maybe LIFESTYLE PETS didn’t mean American/Canadian showline GSDs. After all, these dogs are not the “world’s top champion German Shepherd bloodlines” since they are a North American phenomenon.
So maybe LIFESTYLE PETS meant German showline GSDs, by far the most widely-recognized around the world as the “top” GSD show dogs.
OK, except “champion” is not a title awarded in the German conformation show system, nor a term used. So if somebody like LIFESTYLE PETS calls these GSDs the “world’s top champion German Shepherd bloodlines”, they are revealing so much ignorance about these dogs that they lose all credibility.
Because of the mandatory working title system for GSDs in Germany, there are still some German showline GSDs who can do breed-appropriate work and could fill the role of highly-trained family protector. Suitable dogs make up a relatively small percentage of this population.
The German showline GSD is the world’s most numerous GSD population around the world. Top show quality dogs are extremely expensive. SV Siegers (the #1 male at the annual SV Sieger show) reportedly have sold for over $300,000, and $10,000-20,000+ dogs are common. Even 8 week old puppies sell for $2000-6000+.
Among GSDs, the highest odds for a highly-trained family protector are in the working line GSD population. They are less expensive than showline GSDs, and more suitable for the role. They need to be carefully matched to homes, as most pet homes would not provide the leadership or mental/physical stimulation that most of these dogs require.
Working line GSDs are not “champion” bloodlines. They constitute less than 5% of GSDs, but make up a large majority of the GSDs actually used for demanding breed-appropriate work.
Comment by LauraS — April 10, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
Most of you noticed the 3 day orientation period (was upped to 5) but did anyone notice that the dogs were not “titled” but they were “Schutzhund certified” maybe you noticed the payment plan…WTF, or maybe you noticed the dogs going “through obstacles” and not over them. Holy crap they can’t even get the words right. Cause the last I heard we “titled” dogs in Schutzhund and the dogs “run/climb/jump” to retrieve the dumbbell. Sounds like this place is false advertising to me, if the dogs are not “titled”, cause there is no such thing as “Schutzhund certification”. Also sounds like this guy is using the word “Schutzhund” to sell dogs. They are doing a disservice to our sport and if the dogs are not titled then maybe USA should be seeking for C&D order on Lifestyle’s advertising. Cause the first time one of his “Schutzhund certified” show line GSD’s bites someone it just helps to further the media’s explosion of dog bite stories. And our sport then begins its long legal journey to stay alive.
oh ya…bout the same amount as everyone else said 6-12 thousand with Sch3, AD, narcotics and patrol certifications. This guys livin large on the suckers, fix it, educate the suckers.
All I gotta say…good comments though.
Comment by Mark — December 23, 2008 @ 4:22 pm