You Don't Matter, He's Not a Slave

From the desk of Tarma Shena

Many people choose to purchase an adult livestock guardian, and that might be for a couple of different reasons. A fox takes a chicken or they see a coyote on the back forty and they need to have an LGD right now!

Let’s go with the best case scenario and assume that the owner selling the dog is completely honest. It IS actually livestock safe, has been through a lambing/kidding, is good with poultry, and respects fences.

This is where things start to break down. Livestock guardian dogs are intelligent animals, but we get caught up in the human condition, expediency, and the “easy” road.

The dog is advertised as being friendly, good with the kids and house dogs. Well mannered with visitors and indifferent to non threats like the mail carrier and trash pick up.

“Plug and Play” is how they are billed. No work involved. Our favorite scenario, humans are the only animals I have ever seen that will work so hard at being lazy.

No work is a myth and yet people will convince themselves that this intelligent animal will just make the shift like nothing changed. While the dog in question might have excelled at all those things, it was for HIS owner.

You are not his owner, these are not his sheep, not his chickens, not his children, not his farm.

YOU don’t matter. He is not a slave, not a servant, not a robot. He is under no obligation to put his life on the line for your farm.

“But they were bred to work, it’s instinct!”

In some instances this works on the surface, dogs raised hands off and institutionalized to a single field with their stock will stick to their new animals as the only familiar thing in a new environment, if you have the fences to keep them contained. Or they might manage to escape and you will never see them again, we’ve seen that happen too.

It isn’t any less traumatic, people just tell themselves the dog is happy because it has some kind of job still.

Instinct is not programming, farms have different rules, layouts, schedules, and goals. You cannot just plug in the dog and have it download all the environmental variables and be good to go by morning.

But that is how people act.

“He had sheep on his previous farm!”

Well your last school had students too, and your last job; coworkers, just like now. There is no reason for you to feel nervous, homesick, or need any kind of training or orientation.

You’ve done it before right?

Or worse yet, buy a dog who has lived its whole life with sheep despite the fact that you have goats. Close enough right? Try getting transferred to a foreign country, it’s the same job, should be no problem. What? You don’t speak the language, figure it out.

Kids and Pet dogs are my favorite though, he loved ours.

The truth is those were HIS kids and HIS pet dogs, and most of them are untrained, ill mannered little heathens. Yes, both of them. But they were HIS and he grew up with, loved, and learned to put up with their behaviors.

I assure you that the kids and pet dogs in your home are under no such protections. You brought him into this environment and you OWE him time to adjust, because the first time he lays down the law with you unruly five year old who just nailed him in the head with a plastic dump truck, all hell is going to break loose.

The first time he knocks your elderly chihuahua into the dirt because it spends all its time snapping at him from under the furniture and growling when he comes near you, will leave you shaken.

We see it all the time, people insisting they don’t understand where it went wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, there are also adult LGDs out there who are kind, sweet, and willing to put up with whatever their new home dishes out.

There are LGDs who are dumber than rocks and don’t have enough brain cells to stress out about the changes.

There are a small number of rehomes that go down without a hitch, furthering the plug and play idea of the adult dog. But, sadly, the truth is that a lot of people rehoming adult dogs are not honest, and the dog is likely going to take longer to adjust than it would take a puppy to grow up.

Needing adjustment doesn’t make it a bad dog or a failed LGD, it’s the people who need to make purchases with the knowledge that there IS going to be work involved, it is going to take time, and nothing worthwhile is easy.