Decide on how high of an energy level dog you want. They come in many levels of energy. You can usually figure out what the dog you are looking at has energy wise. Dogs level of intelligence also varies a lot.

Our last aquisition dog wise a burmese mountain dog and collie mix we think. He is still breaking us in. Unfortuatly larger dogs have a much lesser lifespan. He may see no more than nine years of life and the mountain dog portion is subject to a fairly high incidence of cancer as well.

He is very gentle and reasonably smart. His energy level is still too high at about two years of age though. I liked the member showing his somewhat aggresive dog being dealt with. He was simply letting the dog know that he was the dominate one by the bite to the dogs throat.