If you are wanting something in the sense of protection, you may want to invest in a more protective breed. My personal favorites are GSDs in which with a little training a good balance of socialized and protectiveness can be achieved. But GSDs aren't for everyone, find a breed that is protective but suited to your livestyle. Remember, socialize the dog off your property, but reward alert behavior at home.
You can train your lab to act protective once more. My first and foremost suggestion is to hire a professional to do this. You want controlled, channeled aggression, not just aggression. An uncontrollable aggressive dog is going to be the ones you see on the news attacking kids. With the help of a professional, you can train the dog to commands and the dog learns that attacking and eating everyone isn't the goal.
When working with our dogs, we start small and never encourage aggression outside the yard, the goal is really alertness. What we will do is have a family member approach our driveway gate in a suspicious manner, overexaggerate, you want to warrant a reaction out of the dog, even if it's a muffled "woof". So, Adam wearing a strange hat and walking in a crouching/sneaking manner will approach the gate, I will have the dogs on a leash and encourage and reward any alert behavior. Reward the moment they alert you to the person's presence. Keep the dog on a leash, you don't want them wandering to the gate and smelling a family member. Before long, your dogs will be alerting you to visitors again. Reward is the key.
I have two old bichons that when they were younger were the best watch dogs in the world. My border collie cross just follows what the other dogs do and my lab use to scare me with his protectiveness. He would almost go through the windows. Now people can pull up in the drive and walk to the house and they don't even bark!! I hate it. I am alone a lot and i live in the boonies. How can i get them to alert again. Ive never had this problem before. This has all changed in just the last few months.
