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My brother had two chow mixes. The male, Toby, looked almost pure chow except that he didn't have the classic head. The female, Sandy, was the image of a retriever. You would think that Toby would be vicious and Sandy would be gentle, but it was the total opposite. Toby had the sweetest personality of any dog I ever met. When my brother became a trucker, I took Toby in and was never once afraid to have him around my little dogs. Sandy on the other hand was a known cat killer and the one time she was put in with my dogs (without my permission, thanks to a neighbor) Gypsy ended up with a nasty bite on her chest. There's no proof that Sandy did it, but I have no doubt she did. Has anyone else ever had/known dogs that were different from their breed's reputation?

But she wasn't vicious?

Well, like you said, they're chow MIXES. Because they're mixed, everything ends up being a gamble. In these cases, what they look like has nothing to do with personality. Sure, you might get lucky and get one that looks like AND acts like a retriever, but like I said, it's a gamble.

Using my dog (a mutt) for example: He looks like a terrier, but points. He's also a smaller medium sized dog? (he's ~ 30 pounds... but overweight) but he swears he's a lapdog. One thing that always shocks us (because he is labelled a Terrier X) is the fact that he has never killed anything. He's been in close contact with hamsters, mice, rabbits, etc. and all he does is sniff them and follow them around (or in the case of the mice, jump back when they bite him and then continue to try to sniff them rolleyes They were baby field mice - AND WERE BITING HIM SO THAT HIS LIPS WERE BLEEDING!)