I can give you an idea of what my experience has been as mastiff owner. Keep in mind I got two of my mastiffs together and then add a third. That is a lot of dogs in a house. As mastiff owners, we have made accommodations in our lives, house and yards for the dogs. How my life has change since I became a dog breeder/owner. I have to have a suburban to go anywhere with my dogs. Owning three mastiffs means going on vacation and putting dogs in a kennel is very expensive. Having such large mastiffs can be difficult to have pet sitter come in while we are on vacation. That means I do not travel as much as I used to. We do camp on weekends and the dogs go with us. Most my friends and family think I am nuts because according to them the dogs make my life so much harder. Which they do but I love them, my family loves them.
My house will never be the show home it once was before I owned dogs. I put in hard wood floors, because who can keep carpeting clean with three mastiffs and three kids. Who am I kidding? Even with the hard wood floor in spring I have tough time keeping them clean? Mastiff do shed and drool so keeping a house clean is not easy. If you leave the lid up on the toilet they use it for a drink and leave a mess. My mastiffs only drool after drinking, watching you eat or after running around. Having three mastiffs that mean there is always cleaning to be done and a house that is spotless is never unless dogs are outside for the day. We do not have tables with knick knacks on them because the dogs? tails are always waging and breaking the knick knacks. On occasion one of my dogs will decide that he would like to eat drywall. Do not ask me why, they just do. My husband will fix the walls and then a few months later they have a taste for it again. My dogs are spoiled but they are well behaved. They do have a few rules they are not allowed in my bed or on my furniture. They have a twin mattress in the living room. Do not feel too bad for them they have their own bedroom with a queen size bed and every once in a while I find them in bed with my daughters. My yard is fenced in so the dogs can play outside. I have given up on flowers since Ziggy loves to eat them. We used to have a lovely yard, nice thick green grass with beautiful flower beds now we have some grass with lots of tread marks where grass used to be. We have lots of holes because Pumba loves to dig. I do have an outside kennel for the dogs for those times when non dog people to come to visit. I hardly use it but it is there for the times when we may need it. I love my dogs. They are loving, loyal and wonderful pets. They give some extra meaning to my family. We are nuts about them. Each one of them have a different personality and enhance my life.
Our dogs have great temperaments; they have to because my house is always filled with a ton of kids and teenagers. Socialization is the most important thing you can do for mastiffs. Exposing them to different situation and many different people is very important. Mastiffs are very social and want to be with the family all the time. Mine are always with me they follow me from room to room laying in whatever room I am in. They go to our kids? softball games, to dog parks, the pet stores and camping. Our dogs are very social; they love to go camping with us on the weekends. They love their long walks around the campground. It is amazing sight to see three large mastiffs and a Maltese mix walking together. We never get very far because other campers are stopping us to pet and talk about the dogs. Even though my dogs have great temperaments I do watch them carefully around strangers. You never know what someone may do that the dog will interpret as threatening and dogs like people do not like everyone they meet. You just need to be a responsible dog owner.
