5 protective breeds that can keep your home safe and family secure
However, choosing the best breed for home protection requires careful consideration of temperament, size, trainability, and your family's specific needs. They should be naturally protective of their territory and family while remaining stable and predictable in their behaviour.
Here are the top 5 dog breeds if you are looking for more protection for your home:
There is a good reason why German shepherds are constantly ranked as one of the top choices for home defense. They are highly skilled and adaptive dogs that were bred to herd, but are also fantastic at guarding. German shepherds are great family protectors due to their incredible trainability and instinct to defend.
Rottweilers are fierce protectors due to their strong physique and innate protective tendencies. These dogs have a centuries-long history of providing protection, having been bred to drive cattle and defend Roman camps. They can deter potential threats simply by their intimidating appearance.
Usually known as the 'gentle giant,' the Great Dane is perhaps an unusual selection for guarding your home, but they are so large, they can be intimidating simply by size. With some reaching a height of 32 inches, Great Danes rank among the largest dog breeds in the world and are often intimidating enough to deter an intruder.
Bullmastiffs were bred to guard estates in England against poachers, with the combined strength of a Mastiff and the agility of a Bulldog. Bullmastiffs possess an instinct to protect their family, but, more often than not, do so by their sheer size rather than aggression.
The Cane Corso breed originated in Italy and has historically developed as a guardian and hunting breed. Cane Corso dogs are naturally protective of their territory and family. They also possess a strong instinct to guard, which creates an intimidating appearance. They are an intelligent breed that is easy to train; however, they need someone experienced to provide consistent handling, training, and leadership.
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Time of India
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Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Hindustan Times
The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: Exploring the legacy of fermented fish from ancient Rome to modern kitchens
What if I told you that, as a well-travelled person, you have eaten a lot of fermented fish? That the fish has usually first been left out in the sun to decompose and the final version (which is served to you) is pure extract of fish. You would look at me in disbelief. Some of you would say things like, 'But I don't even eat fish, especially stinky fish!' Fermented fish sauce influences your favourite dishes, even vegetarian ones. (Unsplash) But no, there's no getting around it. Fermented fish has probably made its way to your gullet at some stage in your life, even if you are a vegetarian. From the most ancient of times cooks have always realised that fermented fish adds depth and savouriness to food. Long before the birth of Christ, a condiment called garum made from fermented fish was a mainstay of Roman kitchens. The Romans didn't just use it as a kitchen flavouring. They treated it as pagan marmite smearing it on bread and enjoying it for its fermented taste alone. You are unlikely to have come across garum. But you will almost certainly have met its Asian descendants. The most famous is nam pla, the Thai fish sauce. If you have eaten Thai food in Thailand or anywhere else abroad, you have probably enjoyed nam pla. If you have ordered Thai food in India then the chances are that you have eaten it even if your order was entirely vegetarian. Only if you had specifically told your server 'no fish sauce' could you be sure (well, kind of sure) that there was no fermented fish in your food. Most Thai food is characterised by a layer of umami flavour that comes from nam pla. We don't necessarily notice this because we are focusing on the herbs and the chilli. But take away the nam pla and you will notice its absence: There will be less depth to the food and it will taste curiously flat. Because nam pla is made by a not very appetising process, you won't hear too much about its origins. Nam pla is usually made by fermenting small fish like krill and keeping the liquid produced by this process. This liquid has a hard to capture-in-words flavour full of umami and saltiness. For Thais, it is an integral part of the seasoning process. Nearly every Thai dish (which is not sweet) contains nam pla. Fish sauces are not exclusively Thai. You find them all over the Far East and each version is subtly different. The Vietnamese version is probably more popular than Thai fish sauce in the US for historical reasons. I use both at home. In my experience the Vietnamese sauce is a little sweeter (it's made mainly from anchovies not krill) and lacks the complexity of Thai fish sauce but these generalisations may be misleading because within Thailand there are many varieties of fish sauce. There is a distinction between sauce made from fresh water fish and sea water krill. Flavours can also vary enormously. Fish sauce made for export is mild. Fish sauce for domestic use is stronger and there is also an artisanal fish sauce tradition: Most great chefs will not use mass market nam pla. I am sure the same is true of Vietnam and other Asian countries. But whichever quality of fish sauce Thai cooks use, the truth is that Thai people do not know how to cook their own cuisine without nam pla. If you go to Thailand and order a vegetarian Thai meal then, unless you go to an upmarket place and emphasise how much of strict vegetarian you are, nam pla will be used in the cooking no matter what they tell you. I do feel bad for strict vegetarians because they are often misled. But one way of looking at it is that even when nam pla is used in the cooking they cannot tell. The great thing about umami fish flavourings is that no matter how fishy they may taste that fishiness disappears in the cooking process while imparting a savoury flavour to the food. In the West, chefs routinely use anchovies in cooking for a hit of umami. They don't necessarily tell you this so even people who refuse to have their pizza or bruschetta topped with anchovies at Italian restaurants will happily eat an anchovy-spiked pasta sauce or main course later in the meal without realising that they are eating the same anchovies they refused to eat with their pizzas. The Romans were probably the first to recognise the unique ability of some fish to flavour dishes without making them too fishy. Classic texts tell us that garum, a fermented fish sauce, was a primary ingredient in the cooking of Ancient Rome. Nobody alive has ever tasted the original garum so we can only speculate about the flavour. But archaeologists came upon jars of garum while examining Pompeii, a city that was killed off by an eruption from the Vesuvius volcano. The eruption did not entirely destroy the city and the volcanic ash preserved enough of it to allow us to have a glimpse of life in the Roman Empire. Archeologists found that the garum jars still contained traces of garum and sent these traces for scientific examination. Tests showed that garum was remarkably like Asian fish sauce and probably imparted a similar flavour to dishes. This similarity had already been the subject of much culinary speculation with two schools of thought emerging. One says that Europe and Asia created similar fish sauces but separately. Another says that traders brought Roman garum to Asia and created the local fish sauce industry. It's hard to know what the truth is but it's interesting that while most foods and eating practices we consider East Asian are Chinese in origin (chopsticks, soya sauce, etc) there is no great fermented fish sauce tradition in China. So where did the fish sauce phenomenon come from? Could it have been from Europe? It is impossible to be sure and anyway garum has vanished in modern Italy and is never used in today's kitchens. There is, however, a descendant that survives: colatura, a fermented anchovy sauce made in much the same way in Southern Italy as nam pla is in Thailand. But Colatura is stronger, more expensive and does not form a central part of the cuisine being used mainly for its fishiness which shows up in the cooked dishes. But the idea of garum still fascinates imaginative chefs. One of the many innovations that Rene Redzepi introduced at Noma was the creation of a modern garum flavouring. The idea caught on among his many disciples so you will find garum in trendy European and American kitchens. Redzepi's idea of a garum went beyond fish. At his Noma residency in Sydney a decade ago, he made a garum from fermenting kangaroo meat. He then used that garum to flavour local snow crab in a precedent-setting dish. Unfortunately, Noma never repeats a dish so I doubt if he will ever serve it again. But all is not lost. 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