New puppy - or not

Two months ago I decided that I was going to move ahead with getting sheep, and if I had sheep, regardless of my fencing, I wanted a dog to protect my sheep from predators. When people think of guard dogs they usually think of German Shepherds and Rottweilers, but they have their drawbacks when it comes to protecting livestock.

German Shepherds and Rottweilers were initially bred to move livestock. This means that they have prey drive that has been redirected to moving stock rather than eating it. This is good. This also has to be trained to keep the dog from taking their inbred prey drive to it's logical conclusion. Additionally, they have been bred to bond strongly to humans and take direction from them, again, this helps redirect that all-important prey drive.

I wanted a more independent breed. I wanted a dog that could live outside and comfortably without human guidance and 24/7 human companionship. I also need a dog that won't eat my stock, because in spite of what they were initially bred for both breeds mentioned above have largely lost much of their normal prey inhibition and have been bred for bite-work and police work, making a poor choice for livestock protection even worse!!

So, I began researching, and what I found was a whole group of dogs specifically bred to do exactly what I needed. Large, independent (in fact, largely difficult to train beyond the basics!) dogs with almost zero prey drive! This group of dogs, probably most recognizable to folks in the Great Pyrenees, is large, hardy, fluffy, and oftentimes white.

So, I began researching in earnest, calling friends who had the breeds most commonly seen in the US, and crosses of them. When I looked into them, the breed I most wanted, at first blush, was an anatolian, large, grey, with a dark mask and shorter hair than many of the other dogs, they seemed to be the best bet, and in Arizona, at least they are often mixed with Great Pyrenees (Pyr) or other white fluffy LGDs.

I spoke to a friend who had owned a Pyr that she totally loved, a great dog I had met numerous times, and had since taken in a few other large fluffys. She did not like the Pyr x Anatolian at all, finding the intensity of the anatolian to be too much. It wanted to eat any dog she brought in for weeks and sometimes months, rather than settling into a new norm.

Others I spoke with had also found the anatolian and anatolian x to be too intense and too drivey. These dogs are probably great on huge open range places, or with the right owners, but, just starting off I did not need the additional challenge of a breed that might need even more work!

I found that 1/4 or less anatolian seemed the ideal cross (since crosses are more common here for unknown reasons).

I began to look.

I found a litter of 1/4 Pyr, 1/4 anatolian, 1/2 akbash (yes I had to look it up!) x. They were with stock (poultry) now (very important for bonding even at youngest puppyhood), and from working parents. However, the fly in the ointment was that these dogs were not with sheep. And I still have no sheep, and I won't for some time, meaning that bonding to sheep in the first critical months would be delayed. I elected to hold off.

Here's the rub however; it takes up to two years for an LGD to grow out of silly puppyhood and totally step into the mantle of trustworthy guardian dog. Until that time they are prone to be goofy, wander off if not penned (this habit continues throughout their lives - with some breeds being worse than others), and even kill livestock through adolescent silliness and rough play.

The sooner I got a dog, the sooner I could begin running off the coyotes who have grown complacent to my 30 pound border collies and the intermittent senile barking of my deaf German Shepherd.

Additionally, the livestock I do own, poultry, is the hardest for LGDs to bond to, and many may never bond with them, so I need time to get to work getting the stock I do own protected.

Then, I found a bunch of much younger (and therefore further from weaning and arriving at my place, and closer to the hoped-for arrival of my sheep) maremmas (yes, I also had to look these up!). These pups, in addition to being younger, are also currently with sheep, chickens, horses, cattle, and goats, so pretty much every conceivable type of stock. And even in the short weeks that they are with their mom, they will learn valuable things about how these other animals in their environment act and more importantly, how to act around them. Instead of an eight month gap between the puppy's arrival and the arrival of my stock, and no prior contact with said stock, these puppies will have a 3-4 month gap in-between their exposures to sheep (less if I can help it!!)

Lastly, my continuing research showed that this breed, once bonded with their stock are less likely to wander, and more apt to stay glued to their flock. These dogs (LGDs) wander not aimlessly like house dogs do, but to create predator-free buffers around their stock. So the behavior is bred into many of these dogs, and can create issues with fence jumping and multiple escape attempts. If I can get away with fewer of these unsavory behaviors, all the better.

Lastly, I need this dog to be wary of strangers (which it is bred for) but not so stand-offish that it makes friendly visitors uneasy.

Even though the breeders of these pups came highly recommended by a friend who also owned maremmas, I needed to meet the parents and ensure their temperaments would work in my situation. So off I trekked on a 12 hour round trip drive up to northern Arizona to meet the pups and the parents. The pups were only three weeks old, and so beyond being white, fluffy, and cute, there was really no value to meeting them. Their parents, however were the important ones! Dad (Elvis) was out protecting his stock in the field. I met him when I stopped to photograph his sheep. He charged the car from a respectful distance, barked once or twice, and then seemed more baffled and curious than alarmed. He was never aggressive. I did not linger, not wanting to upset him. I was a stranger in his pasture after all.

Mom, who was obviously outside with her pups, was beautiful and friendly. She had no issues with me approaching her (with her owners of course!) and handing her snoozing pups. I was so busy petting her and talking to her owners and watching the sleeping pups, and pushing away mooching calves that I totally failed to get photos of her!!

Anyway, I was more than satisfied with the mental health of the parents, and so, in 5-7 weeks I will again trek north to pick up my new puppy!!

Chasing geese

I have pursued herding with my dogs for over a decade(!!!). Pursued, not necessarily caught. I took lessons for several years, and Kate became pretty passable at a sport she decided lacked the all important sheep-eating part that she had signed up for. Between her lack of enthusiasm, my lack of either time or money (depending) and life, I never pursued it as I wished, with weekly lesson, a 'real' border collie (Kate is probably a golden retriever mix with border collie coloring and neurosis) and a small herd of sheep of my own to practice on. But, I have geese, and with the sale of the goslings, an X-pen to protect them from hungry dogs, Dice and Cody who both did very well at their instinct tests, and just enough knowledge to know how truly little I know.

Bring on the chaos!!  Cody is the best so far. Dice isn't certain what the rules are and when he is uncertain he disengages.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I went through the huge ordeal of rounding up the extremely displeased and loud geese and chucking them one by one into a dog crate on the ATV. Once assembled, I drive them down to the x-pen and place them into it one by one. They are often wet, having fled through various water tanks in their efforts to evade me, and often have poopy feet. The wetter the ground the poopier the geese. The need for sheep seems more and more urgent.

After the geese have been duly assembled, I head up to the house to pull Cody out of the dog run and put Ketchum in. Ketchum, who is reliable and safe when the geese are out does not need to get other ideas about how to treat the geese.

Cody begins getting insanely cited about the geese the moment she realizes that they're not at the coop, but are instead honking and complaining down at the corral. She has to be leashed for the last couple of hundred yards so that I'm not constantly pulling her back like a yo-yo.

I place her in a sit-stay and walk around the other side of the geese to give Cody the idea that she needs to move the geese towards me. Once I release Cody it's off to the races!!

When I initially took Cody out to see my herding instructor she was very one sided and could only travel in one direction around the stock, so I work hard to help her understand that she can move in both directions.

In the middle of the corral she can move both ways with a fair level of competence, but the last time I worked her I let the geese loose (yes, it was a mess!) and the geese quickly ran to the edges of the corral where there was deeper grass. Cody could only move one way when dealing with these suddenly free geese, and in doing so, often moved them in exactly the wrong direction, causing cross-arena escape attempts that led to me telling Cody to down while I tromped through the grass and weeds, ducking through corral fencing and up the insane slope of the dam at the end of the pond to head the geese off before they headed for their coop.

There was a good deal of running - by me. And since Wednesday was actually nice and sunny, the geese were panting and hot. Uncertain how much running a goose can take. I let them take frequent and long breaks which coincided with my own gasping for breath.

I was absolutely thrilled with Cody's understanding of the game. Yes, there were geese stampedes, but usually not because Cody charged them, rather because the geese are not what is termed dog-broke, which means that rather than predictably heading towards the handler (me) they fled helter-skelter for safety. A lack of fencing certainly did not help matters much.

A friend brought out her corgi pup on Friday to see what he would do with stock. Both corgi breeds were initially herding dogs; Welsh Pembroke corgis (the ones without the tails) which my friend owns are supposed to have lost much of their herding instinct on the road to popularity and of course AKC beauty pagents.

Rye, the corgi puppy, was certainly enthusiastic, but he was mostly in full on predator/ prey-drive mode. My herding instructor told me that what she looks for in a herding test is a dog that instinctively gives the stock space, and circles rather than charges the stock. Even though corgis and border collies are extremely different dogs with different herding styles, I certainly saw what she was talking about with Rye. It took all of us with sticks to keep sweeping him away from the geese to keep them from hopping out and fleeing. In several spirited chases he did assault some goose tail feathers.

It will be interesting to see if my friend, who is an excellent dog handler and trainer, is able to find any nascent instinct in Rye for herding, and bring it to the fore, so that he is less predator more partner. I am not well versed enough in herding to know what is possible and how much work it takes. For all we know Rye was so excited he didn't have time to think, and with further contact with stock he will begin to express his instincts more clearly. My house is a hell of a drive for Rye and his parents, but I want to see how it works out.

Cody for her part impressed the hell out of me in the first four days of playing with the geese and I have to remember that neither of us knows what we're doing so that the experience remains positive and fun for her.

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