On one occasion we had two foster children staying with us for a few weeks. One was a seven year old girl and like most little girls could sometimes be precocious and naughty.

We are careful to supervise children and dogs and have a few special rules which we emphasise. The most important of these, is "do not scream and run" when in the garden with the Neapolitan's or any other dog for that matter.

One morning two of the neighbourhood children joined our little girl for a play session in the garden with us. We had two of the Neapolitan Mastiffs with us. They both knew the children and really liked them. Play was proceeding nicely when I looked up and saw the children preparing for what looked like a new game. The two visiting children were on the lawn near the house and our precocious little miss about 20 metres from them. All of a sudden she started screaming and ran towards the other two children. Before we could react the male Neapolitan galloped toward them all and as he was almost up to them, leapt up, spread his front legs and swooped all three children together and dropped them on the ground. He then whirled around to face whatever threat had caused little miss to run.

He obviously thought there was some threat he needed to defend the children from. After the initial shock, we were very impressed at his method of gathering them all together in a single spot he could easily defend.

Needless to say the children then understood completely the rule "never run and scream - unless you really are in trouble".