Magnum- the unfolding/unravelling story of our LGD

[Ridgetop]

We made the mistake of expecting them to be like our first Blue Heeler. Dingo was sweet, funny, loved cats and although he had a mind of his own he was a joy to have around. These 3 boys and 2 girls are one big challenge and probably more like the typical ACD.

Actually sounds like your problem is not the individual dogs, but you got too many pups at one time. Can you put up a kennel run in the back yard where you can keep 4 at a time while the one learns manners and house breaking individually? By rotating them one after the other into the house and working with each one separately you will have more success. Trying to train all 5 at once is a recipe for failure. They need to be trained one on one. Once they have some basic obedience training you will have control and then they can all be in the house at once. That breed cross should be very smart, but can be hard headed and dominant to train. Both those breeds are working breeds that need a lot of work to do to be happy. Good luck.

 

[Baymule]

Trip is half Pyrenees and half Maremma. The Pyrenees is dominant in him. He can leap a 4’ fence, flat footed. We ran a hot wire around the top, that’s the only way we can keep him in. He jumps internal fences, that’s ok. He will watch Sheep for awhile, get hot, get bored, it thunders, just because, he jumps out and comes to the house, under the porch. LOL

As @Ridgetop has said, LGDs are a whole ‘nother kind of dog. They don’t do tricks. What motivates a dog that lives to please you, won’t motivate a LGD. They are wired different.

As far as asking for help and getting answers all across the board, you are in control, you pick and choose what applies to your dog. Never be afraid to ask for help. Just know and understand that you will get lots of feedback. It doesn’t mean that you MUST use it all. People will share what worked for them. Glean what you want. It will all be ok.

 

[bethh]

This is the place and these amazing people will lead you in the right direction. I had my battles with Gracie, our Anatolian/GP/Kangal, when she was getting out. I’m sure if there is a page showing all the things not to do, you’ll see my picture. Now, I count on Gracie to do the training of new pups.

 

[microchick]

We were very lucky in that the pups house trained themselves with the aid of a doggie door. We had about a month of OMG! That is just too much poop and pee for 5 puppies to make before they realized that they could let themselves out via the doggie door we put in for them. No in the house accidents for almost a year now.

I have been working with them one on one but need to start working with them again as soon as the prong collar arrives. I have a form of RA along with moderate to severe osteoarthritis/porosis and take treatments every 6 months that knock me for a loop for about 6 weeks and then intermittently for another two months after that so things have to happen in my 'window of opportunity'.

Hardheaded? Look the word up in the dictionary and you will see my avatar. That is Varn when he was about 8 months old. Definition of hard headed. If he gets in a disagreement with his brother (his brother generally starts it) and correct his brother, he will get mad at us. Hardheaded. Yep.

We would love to have at least one or two of them to eventually be able to run loose on our property to keep varmints away from our chickens. No chance of the chickens being loose but we have a large fox and other predator problem on our property. Our first cattle dog would run all over our 29 acres at night keeping the varmints away.

The challenge will be to train them to stay inside our fence line.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I'm going to relay a story about my six month old Anatolian LGD that happened yesterday. She is a very timid dog and her breeder originally thought she might not be LGD material. I've been working with her for quite some time and she's not exactly 'timid' but she's very submissive. She goes out during the day with the big dogs quite often and is doing great with their guidance.

Yesterday we had a change of pace. She stayed all day in a smaller area with chickens, two does and a buckling. There are no other goat kids in this area and the buckling is bored. After a while, I noticed him trying to play with the dog.

Generally, people complain about their dogs playing with the goats - but this was just as I explained it. The goat initiated it and every time he reared up to play with the dog she would roll over in a totally submissive posture. Good dog. I want her to be submissive - but I don't want her to be bullied, lol. At that point - even though she hadn't done anything wrong I removed her from the pen. In my opinion, to leave her there might have been setting her up for a failure. She might have decided to 'play' back. She might have been hurt and decided to defend herself. I wasn't willing to take that chance so out she came. She's good, the buckling is good and she didn't have the opportunity to learn a bad habit.

Just one of those times that it pays to stand back and watch for a minute. Had I not noticed that the goat was initiating the game I might have tried to correct the dog. That wouldn't have been the appropriate action under this circumstance.

 

[ChickenMomma]

@Ridgetop the yard around our home is not fenced in. We can see both pastures from our back deck. The smaller of the two is where the goat house is and where Magnum's kennel is, and I have to walk through the yard 20 yards to get to that gate. Walking through that pasture, there is a gate to a much larger pasture. The goats spend most of their day in the larger pasture and I close the gate so that Magnum can have the smaller one to himself to run around and I dont have to worry with him getting out or the goat confrontations.

I read an article shortly after we got him, that said most GP do not make it to adulthood because of their wandering traits and that made me fearful to let him roam loose in our yard. That is when we got the 12x12 kennel for him, so that I could sleep at night knowing he was safe and the goats were safe. We often let him out of the pasture WITH US and roam the yard and accompany us during feed time for the chickens and goats, and in the garden, etc. He roams around marking his territory but never ventures far from our sight. He has never just flat out ran away from us when we are out working. The times that he runs away is when he is on the leash in training or when I am trying to put him back in the pasture and he doesnt want to go.

 

[Baymule]

It might help to fence your back yard. Our place is totally fenced in, as our house sits 100 yards off the road. If you fence your back yard to the goat fence, it would give him the option of "visiting" his family. You could leave the gate open when the goats are in the barn and he would be able to come in at night for awhile.

Right now, we have 4 big dogs sprawled out in the floor. Hurricane Laura is sending us some rain, Trip is deathly afraid of thunder. Paris, our female GP is terrified of thunder also, but won't come in the house. She has a dog house she goes in. The other dogs come and go in the house, at their pleasure. LOL When it is so hot in the late afternoons, we usually have 1, 2 or all 4 soaking up the AC. For the most part, they would rather be outside, and they usually are.

Don't get discouraged, you will get this and so will Magnum. There is a lot of information in the LGD forum. Read the posts there, you will be surprised how much it will help. Sift through it, pick what works for you. LGD posts used to be all over the place. I asked Nifty to please make a section for our dogs and he did.

 

[Beekissed]

I say you can't obedience train an LGD because the type of obedience training we all know is the dog heeling nicely and doing an auto sit when you stop. This isn't going t happen with an LGD.

ALL my LGDs have been trained to walk obediently and calmly on a leash and also heel when not on a leash, sitting automatically when I stop. Even the most hard headed pup, a female Anatolian that I recently sold would do this. Leash training is one of the easiest things to teach a LGD. I've had Akbash, Anatolian, GP/Maremma/Anatolian and GP dogs and all could walk well on a leash with minimal training...and I'm no dog trainer, by any means.

I've also taught them good recall, which most say they can't be taught. If they are out ahead of me in a walk, even if they spot something they want to chase, I can call them back immediately. If they notice I've stopped, they will come back to me and sit at my feet without my even having to call them back. None of that took months of training but just a few weeks or so for each of them....with months I could probably teach them to do my taxes...these dogs are smart.

Leash training isn't about walking a dog on a leash, it's about establishing a pack leader and leash walking is the easiest way to do that. You may never have to take your dog anywhere that you need it to walk calmly on a leash, but eventually you likely will~to the vet, to another field or area, while company is in the field, etc. When my dogs get that leash on, it's like someone flipped a switch and they are ready to go where I take them....that's pretty important when the dog is the size and wt these dogs get.

 

[Ridgetop]

It might help to fence your back yard. Our place is totally fenced in, as our house sits 100 yards off the road. If you fence your back yard to the goat fence, it would give him the option of "visiting" his family. You could leave the gate open when the goats are in the barn and he would be able to come in at night for awhile.

Absolutely true. Your puppy wants to be with animals or people that love him. If the goats don't like him he will want to be with you. If you fence your yard to include the gates to the pastures, he will be able to come and go between the goats and your house, By adding a hot wire around the top of the perimeter fencing - the outside fence of all the pens and yard, hopefully he will not jump or climb out and will stay inside that area but will be able to visit the goats and other pasture. This would help keep him within your designated fenced areas. When he is full grown he will be able to keep watch over the livestock in both pastures from the back deck. Try to fence your yard so he can have access to the pastures and the house or at least the back deck.

He is a baby, he gets lonesome for friendly company. Putting an 8 week old puppy into a pasture alone with thegoats without making sure the goats acceoted him was risky. Magnum escaped. But a predator could have eaten him, the goats could have injured him. Instead of coming to the porch he could have wandered off. Has he been microchipped? Be sure to do so if he isn't already. That way if he does wander off you can get him back.

At night after the sheep are put up, our 3 Anatolians are fed and invited into the house for some family time. If there is something they are not comfortable with outside they will not come in. Otherwise, they sprawl out on the floor and enjoy a couple hours with the family before asking to return outside to their duties. It is important to remember that traditional livestock guardian dogs and their masters lived together 24/7. Either they stayed with the flock and their masters or were with them when they returned to the village with the sheep. At any rate the dog and humans were together more than they were apart. Since we pen our flocks up, we are not with them 24/7 anymore. Expecting our LGDs to stay with the flock with no human interaction is not a normal thing for either us or the dogs.

 

[ChickenMomma]

The fencing would take a lot of time and money and something we would have to think about. Our yard isn't flat so there are hills and banks to scale and the layout wouldn't mean just a simple square fence, so it is something we will have to plan. It is my hope that when he is older he would roam our land and stay in the perimeters without fencing but still have his own area to bed down and eat.

If I don't start focusing on some positives and things that are going right with him I am going to deflate, so I have good news. Yesterday I started having "goat time" with him in his kennel. I got the two girl goats who are the most easy going and we had behavior training in his kennel with him. I got him to lay down and watch them for a bit. They came nose to nose a couple of times and he didn't snap at them! Every time he made an advance toward them I corrected him. But after about 10 minutes, he was losing his cool, so I ended it. I will keep repeating this every day, a couple of times a day.

I also did the sit and wait with his food this morning. Happy to report that he has no food aggression whatsoever! I even put a treat he likes on top of the food, took it back off, put one back in, interrupted him several times and he would stop and look at me until I said go ahead. It was like he already knew what to do.

Leash time to me is a time where I can control him and be the alpha. We also did that yesterday and I feel like he has a good understanding of "stop". The only command, but probably the one I repeat the most to him lol.

Baby steps.......