Breeder's Diary, Part 3 — The Stillness of a Mature Male
An observation from raising six male Japanese Akita past two years old: they go still on their own. A trait that comes from the AKIHO standard's Kan-i / Shibu-mi, and a real-world reason it makes the dogs easier to live with.
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This is something I observed from my own dogs. The males, once they pass roughly two years of age, get very still — much stiller than before, and much stiller than males of many other breeds. Still automatically. They may get a little happy when we reunite, but never to the level the females do, and it's like that with every single one of them. I have six males over two years old at the moment — Byakuren, Ichigo, Junjunmaru, Jomusuke, Benitora, and Toraō — and even some of the second-generation males like Tarō have started to settle visibly, even though he's only around 8–9 months old.
I've watched many imported dogs in Thailand under the FCI standard that don't carry what I wrote about in Our Akita Inu Part 1, and this dovetails with the standard I described in the Kan-i and Shibu-mi sections. You can see that the kennels who bring dogs in from Japan — or whose dogs are only a few generations down from Japan, even if they're sitting in Europe (though they're rare to find) — preserve this kind of temperament. It is, in fact, the correct Akita Inu personality under the AKIHO standard. Saying it again may sound repetitive, but I want to keep pointing this out: good breeding has to breed into temperament. Every individual has its own surface differences in disposition, but underneath there is something like a blueprint of the mind that runs across them.
The advantage of this stillness — beyond reinforcing the dog's air of elegance — is that it makes the dogs much easier for an owner to handle. The Japanese Akita stays still to read the situation before deciding to act. It stands quietly with a serious bearing, simultaneously assessing the other side and pressuring them, while conserving the energy it might need if a real fight comes. Some people, looking only at the surface, conclude that the dog is frozen with fear. But strip away your assumption and look at the dog's face — you'll usually see a clear confidence sitting there. And if you actually let them fight, every one of my dogs at home — and most good Akita Inu — will absolutely fight. They simply choose not to act first without cause. That is also a correct trait of the breed: do not provoke. (That said, it depends on the dog's experience. If something has hurt the dog before, this restraint thins out accordingly.)
I personally love this trait, very much.
— Tamahagane Garden