Totaly New to Dogs and I Realy Need Help

    • Puppy

    Totaly New to Dogs and I Realy Need Help

    Hi there,

    I recently realized that I need guard dog(s) to guard my farm and livestock (goats, sheep, cows, chickens and duck)After reading about dog breeds and searching around I fell in love with German Shepherds Yes.They are intelligent and can make good working dogs.I found a pedigree, 6 months old GSD that is somewhat territorial but very smartI wonder how I should introduce it to other animals on the farm.How can I tell when it is safe to leave her unsupervised with other animals?

    Do you recommend any books/websites for me to read?

    Thanks in advance Big Smile

     

    • Gold Top Dog

     GSDs are herders and depending on their prey drive, you could have some dead or injured livestock.

    • Silver

    Spend the money on at least a couple of in-home sessions with a trainer. An untrained German Shepherd with access to chickens, ducks, sheep, and goats? Let your imagination run wild!

    The puppy is displaying territorial behavior already? That's early. Make that trainer a certified behaviorist. You may be misreading some other behavior. Either way, you don't want Cujo patrolling your farm when the mailman comes up the driveway. A behaviorist can help you read your dog and let you know if there are any issues you need to really work on.

    I read everything I can get my hands on. Behavior. Theory. Training methods. Body language. Books, TV shows, Web sites, message boards, you name it. There can't be a method or theory I couldn't at least summarize by now, but all that knowledge has been worth zero to me without hands-on experience. I've made a lot of mistakes that could have been easily avoided if I'd spent a couple of hundred on in-home consultations from the beginning.

    Get someone out there with you. You'll thank yourself later.

    • Gold Top Dog

    Honestly if I were getting a GSD for that line of work I would have gotten a puppy (so it could be raised with livestock) and been *really* selective about the lines and the breeder.  This is more the type of work for a livestock guardian dog like a Great Pyrenees.  GSDs are herders, they help move livestock and mainly create a "fence" by circling the flock.  For the true HGH dogs in Germany, they are trained in protection but this is increasingly rare, especially in the US.  It would be difficult to find a dog from such lines that have proven themselves in this type of work.  You'd probably have better luck finding some farmers that breed non-pedigreed dogs for this type of farm work.  Also Fenris is right, the GSD often possesses a very high level of prey drive which is most often not suited for small animals.  Even when herding and tending the flocks there are shepherds (people) present.

    • Silver

     Guard dog? My vote: Bullmastiff. Personal bias Big Smile