Barry, your picture reminded me of the dog I grew up with many years ago in Australia. My father had this dog during WWII when he was stationed in Darwin. The dog was a mix of Australian kelpie and Queensland healer. Not very big, maybe 50 lbs, but he had been trained as a guard dog.
During the bombings of Darwin by the Japanese, the AA batteries or the Royal Australian Air Force would occasionally shoot down a plane and an Army detachment would be sent to look for survivors. The dog would go with them. If the downed crew showed any signs of resisting capture, the dog would be sent in to sort them out.
In 1947 we moved south to Melbourne and the dog came with us as a house pet. He was my father's dog but he was my best buddy. He would sleep with me and follow me around. But he never forgot his training. We had to keep him in a high fenced yard because he did not take to strangers coming to the door. On one occasion the gas man came to read the meter. There was nobody home and although we had a large "Beware of the Dog" sign displayed prominently the man decided to hop over the fence to get to the meter. He swung a leg over, promptly lost the heel of his boot and the dog latched onto the rest of it until my father got home and called him off--the man had been straddling the fence for an hour with the dog hanging on.
That dog never barked and had been trained that way. He had also been trained to only eat cooked meat to avoid him taking poisoned food. He died at the age of 14 years in 1955 and it was the only time I ever saw my father cry--we all did.
His name was Sebastien.
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