Quoted from Douglas Oliffs book The Ultimate book of Mastiff breeds, the Neapolitan Mastiff section. But through out his book he makes references like this towards all the Mastiff breeds.
" Every owner or Prospective owner should realize that it is extremely unlikely that you can safely run two adult males together after they are about 14 months old. An interesting characteristic of Neapolitans is that the male will usually tolerate a ******** attempt to exercise her authority over him,but no male in the same house or kennel. I emphasise this because I have known unsuspecting purchasers to have been persuaded by a breeder to purchase two eight week old male puppies on the grounds that they will be company for one another. This may be so, until the first skirmish occurs. Neapolitans have exceptionally long memories. Once the first test happens, there will be no truce. From then on the dogs will have to be housed and exercised separately."
I have had people ask me if they neuter one of the males will this help? Well here is one of my personal stories. We had a rescue that had been neutered at 8 weeks of age. As soon as he turned 15 months old he attacked his long time friend our Great Pyr. They were never able to be housed together after that. Here are a few topics that I have pulled up on the subject from the other Neapolitan Mastiff Message boards. Please read thru them!!!Copy and paste them to your search engines.
We had a rescue blue male that was neutered at 6 months of age, we got him at 14mos. He hit 2 years old and attacked our Roman Rottie and almost killed him, though the Rottie outweighed him by about 30lbs.
Our Tawny female took 5 years to condition to tolerate other large females. It was difficult...Bella thought her mission in life was to kill other large females of any breed. After 5 years of constant training, she now can get attacked by another dog and will look at me, eyes rolling, as if to ask, "Mom, can I???" All it takes is a shake of my head "NO" and she lays down and will tolerate whatever another dog dishes out.
I don't mean that I allow other dogs to take advantage of her, but she needs to know that I am alpha ***** in this kennel and that I am the law! She has never been hit or abused in any way. I have trained exclusively with positive reinforcement and aversion therapy.
The Mastino, when well-trained can be a pefect dog to take out around children and elderly adults. Our entire town knows Bella and loves her. Our 85 year old mother lives with us and our Mastino is exceedingly careful to act in a very gentle manner around the elderly.
I think that, given time, we could have trained our male to not attack our Rottie, but the Neo Rescue organization did not give us a chance. They wanted him back to go to a home where there were no other dogs or children.
As always, a dog is only as good as the training it has received and its bloodlines. A bad breeding, especially in the Mastino, can be a disaster in the making.
Is being sexually deprived bad? My Neapolitan Mastiff
is deprived from doing it because there are no other Neapolitan Mastiffs around in our place. Will this have bad effects?
