Partypup: I was raised with Rottweilers and Alsatians. We had two Rotties, Odin and Thor, that were Schutzhund III trained (Odin was also IPO 3 trained).
I don’t know if you’ve looked into Schutzhund training for your Rotties, but it’s excellent training for obedience and protection and one of the key elements is that your dogs won’t accept orders or food from anyone that isn’t part of the immediate family. Our Rotties and our Alsatian only understood German also and worked off of “key” words as well.
Definitely worth looking into, especially because a Schutzhund trained dog is extremely obedient and very, very disciplined. Both of our Rotties were the Northern German varieties (Braunreiters) and both were in excess of 150lbs and were quite intimidating. Our Alsatian, Max, was about 115 and looked like a puppy next to the Rotties.
Only problem we had with the Rotties was that they loved to frag cats.
