Livestock guardians in suburbia

 You need to let them patrol their "area" every day - and that's not just the land you live on.  Walk them in a circular route with your house at the centre - that's what they'll need to check out daily.

I live in a small suburban house and a breeder is happily letting me have a Maremma puppy when she has a successful mating.  I know one who lives in central London, too.  The important thing is commitment to making it work, as these are not your average house pet and they will/do have some quirks to be taken into account.  It would not, for example, be uncommon for your LGD to sleep across doorways, especially ones leading directly outside.  You need to make formal introductions between the dog and any human coming to your house for any reason, but in my experience (relating solely to Maremmas) they readily accept people on neutral territory and are quite affectionate.   They will alert bark and it will be LOUD, so take that into account too.  Early training to respond to the concept of "thanks, I've seen what you're barking at, you can stop now" is a must, but they will readily accept that from you if you have earned their respect. 

LGD's are active, yes, but it's not the kind of activity you get from say...a Lab, or any other "busy" breed.  They patrol, investigate odd things, in the case of working LGD's they are on the lookout for anything that might need their intervention to keep the stock safe.  That will be the same, to an extent, with a house-pet LGD, except that they will view YOU as their flock, and your partner, the other dogs, the rabbits, etc.  This is not a dog who is going to tear around your garden at breakneck speed, but rather one who will move around to make sure nothing untoward is going on.  

Ditto what Kate said. I grew up with Bouviers, which are not LGDs, but do all of the things talked about above. They are great dogs, wonderful family dogs, but not for everyone.

My parents Bouv is on guard duty 24/7, even if he is fast asleep under the kitchen table or working on obedience. He will immediately respond to any noise around the perimeter of the house or yard with a series of very loud, very threatening alert barks. He stops when he is told "enough," and goes back to sleeping or whatever he was doing at the time. He's been thoroughly trained and is very biddable, but not the average suburban pet by any means.

He is aloof but friendly to anyone who comes in the house and gets the OK from a family member. This is crucial, and every time someone crosses the threshold he has to be told, "so and so is OK." He goes with whatever we say and will go back to resting or whatever he was doing after that. If someone is there a lot then he considers them part of his herd. He would protect my sister's friends as readily as my sister, since there were there so often before she went to college.

At night he patrols the house, so no bedroom doors are closed. He usually settles in with the youngest member of the family (which may change daily depending on who is there/visiting), and would protect the family with his life.

With the Bouvs, I've always understood it to be: your either part of my flock (in which case I will guard you), a visitor (who is OK, but I will protect my people if I think you are threatening my herd) or a potential threat.

All that being said, he has never bitten, has never caused problems, and loves children. Both their current Bouv and the one I grew up with were great family dogs, who happened to live in suburbia  It's just a very different package than most suburban dogs.

What Kate said.  Also remember this is not a dog you will romp around the fields with, unless you like waiting four hours for your dog to return from checking every signpost in the neighborhood.

When Kate says "commit to going for a walk" - that means, your walk must extend out within dog earshot from your home.  That's a circle with a mile radius straight out from your home.  You don't have to cover the entire territory taken in by this area, every time, but your walks must take in a good chunk of it on a regular basis. 

Also, as I type, there is a 95 pound dog standing on the bed, with her paw on my leg.  I'm not hugely put out (well, she just moved it), but it's a lot of dog to consider herself a lap dog.  Most LGDs will go well over 100 pounds.  Seriously, that's a lot of dog.  It's a beautiful thing to share your life with a dog that's really there in such a solid way, but as Kate says, if the dog has plopped down in a doorway or across your lap while you are watching TV, there's some logistical issues to consider.

Pick your breed and your breeder with great caution.  Some of the more primitive breeds are less people friendly.  Some of the more "refined" - mean further away from their working roots - are aggressive in odd, random ways (over here it's hard to find a family friendly Komondor as they are mostly either badly bred on farms, or show bred). 

A companion LGD cannot be trained by force.  Period.  They have like, no pain/pressure susceptibility at all. 

I just spent two sessions on two separate days  dematting Lulu's rear end, which I haven't been able to get to in years.  Their coats are made to felt rather than mat in an unhealthy way but ridding them of these mats is still tedious and pulls the skin as it does in any dog.  Lu stood patiently for over an hour, with no restraint, both times, while I hacked and combed and raked away. 

I remember eleven years ago, my first LGD, was a dog I borrowed from someone until I found one of my own.  Duke was a Pyr and his coat was just one big mat - real mats with the skin tied up in them. 

I took the sheep shears to him, not actually knowing HOW to use the shears yet, and I think I cut more skin than hair off that poor dog.  And yet he never flinched when I just sheared right through a bunch of skin.  Holy cow, I'd never seen anything like that in my life. 

That made quite an impression on me.  I also shortly thereafter asked a real groomer the right way to shave a matted dog, a skill that's since made a difference in many a rescue dog's life!

Speaking of coat, care and shedding amounts depend on the type of dog you are considering. 

The classic "big white" breeds all shed like crazy.  The Pyrs are the worst, of course, and kennel club breeding has made their coats somewhat less correct in that they often mat rather than cording or felting.   There's a huge difference.  If you miss a felted or corded spot, it will not tend to progress towards the skin, because the coarse guard hair will prevent this. 

Felted mats shed out with each coat change (on shedding dogs), with some exceptions.  Twice a year I brush out trouble spots that vary with each dog - tail on all of them, back on Tully, flanks on Min, and Lu should have been getting her "pants" combed out but she wouldn't hold still for it outside.  I think she has arthritis in her tail area.

A showy, soft, flowing coat will allow a mat to progress towards the skin, gather in more hair, etc, so you have to groom every day on these dogs.  Think giant sheltie.

Komondorak are traditionally corded (non shedding).  That sounds like it would be easy care but it's actually high maintenance.  The advantage of cords is that if you keep them clean, it's less of an allergy problem than shedding hair.  Just less.  And that's a big if.  And again, you want to go for breeders that have stayed with the correct coat, which is less showy (the cords are very rough and uneven).   I've seen Komondorak with incorrect coats that were corded and they looked awful - the cords break at the skin and the dog looks like a mangy alien.

Anatolians are smooth coated.  There's a lot of shedding involved there too (think German Shepherd or Corgi), but at least there's not a lot of combing.  Zoom grooms are useful to get out undercoat and slick them down, just like with GSDs. 

Grooming doesn't especially bother me. We've been brushing Kivi Tarro's coat twice daily for a while because his adult coat is growing in and it's all just a big mess. We have eased up lately as it seems to have improved. Brushing/combing him usually results in him biting me every time I pull and sometimes just for fun. I can't wait until he gets over that! At least he seems happy enough to be brushed in the first place.

Are we talking radius in a strict sense?  We live in a cul-de-sac and it's quite a way around to the other side of that gully next to us.

corvus

Are we talking radius in a strict sense?  We live in a cul-de-sac and it's quite a way around to the other side of that gully next to us.

Fairly, yes.  The dog will need to see what is around the house in all directions.  When my Maremma arrives, the routine will be 1 half-circle of that earshot radius (encompassing the park) in the evenings, and the other half (walking around streets) in the mornings, which I have no doubt will work for us because that is already the schedule I have with Ben.  An LGD will, regularly, need to see what is in/around/behind that gully.  You also WANT him/her to know what is there, because then you have a baseline for when s/he alerts on something.  Do you say "thank you, that's fine, perfectly normal for this spot, you may stop barking now" or do you stand up and take notice?  They will bark at what is strange to them, the key to success in keeping an LGD in an urban/suburban environment is to acclimatise them to as many "normal" things as possible. 

That does, of course, hold true for all dogs and is why we socialise them, but with an LGD you're catapulted into an entirely different league.  The very last thing you want is for the dog to believe that the guy who is coming to read the gas meter is trying to kill you, while at the same time protecting their nature to defend you against someone who really IS a threat.  They need to know what is normal not in the same way as an ordinary dog you'd socialise as a matter of course, because with an ordinary dog you want them used to everything in order that they be "bomb proof" and thus a happy, social dog that can be taken anywhere.  LGD's, on the other hand, can only BE happy, social dogs that can be taken anywhere (when well-bred/of stable temperaments) when they are taught what is normal so that they have a method of comparison to know when something is NOT.   An LGD who has no idea of what it should be protecting you against is a very unhappy, very unstable and potentially VERY dangerous dog.  

Think of how you might feel if someone hired you to do a job you were "born" to do that had a LOT of responsibility, then gave you no instructions or guidance on how to do the job at all and never told you what to expect and when to find a superior because the numbers were off.  It wouldn't take long before you second guessed your own every move, and called in your boss over a perfectly normal set of accounts, then hating yourself later because while you were busy with that, someone embezzled all the company funds.  It would not take long for you to start overreacting to everything you thought *might* be even a little off....this is not a desirable trait in a 100+ lb dog with the willingness and capability to fight to the death if it believes such force is necessary. 

Weird analogy, I know, but that is sort of how these dogs work.  They have your back even when you aren't around, instilling the capability to make the right decisions is HUGELY necessary with them.  

NB: I defer to Becca's (and everyone else's) superior knowledge of any breeds other than Maremmas, and certainly Becca's superior knowledge of Maremmas themselves.  It's the only LGD breed I really know *anything* about and I am still learning, but the above is what I can say with certainty of all the ones I have come into contact with. 

 Just popping in to echo what Becca and Kate have said, and to add that ANY working breed, not just LGD's, needs an owner who is intimately familiar with its needs, so that it doesn't end up being a liability when plucked from its more traditional environment to be kept in suburbia.  I see too many dogs that end up as severe liabilities to their owners who thought they could handle it, and were shocked to find that their dogs were thinking dogs that had an agenda that was not on the same page with the owners' desire to have a pet.  These dogs aren't really pets.  They have serious work to do, and that instinct needs direction if they are to even survive outside their traditional sphere.  I can't even imagine an ordinary suburban family bringing Sequoyah home as a pet and being successful at it.  In fact, had I been an ordinary suburban owner, her breeder would not have sold her to me.  Another reason, perhaps to be careful about breeders, and what they want to know about *you* as well as what you want to know about them, and the breed.  It's an awesome responsibility, IMO, to keep these dogs safe, and Kate's commitment to approximate the natural conditions under which a LGD would learn to discriminate what it normal, and what's not, is a non-negotiable key component in being successful at owning such a dog without livestock.  I'm reminded of my friend's Pyr, who was successful at this for many years, but certainly a dog that she managed with care when novel situations arose around the farm (suburban farm of about 32 acres, largest tract in an area already mostly chewed up), because her neighbors were not from agricultural roots. 

Exactly.  And this is something that has to be kept up through the dog's life, until the hearing starts to go (as I believe is the case with Lu).  That's because they'll constantly be concerned with "what's out there."  You establish the routine of walking out and seeing all the stuff around you.

That includes natural areas because you wouldn't want your dog alerting at every little rustle that goes through the grass back there, particularly at night.  We've talked about the apocalyptic result of not properly socializing an LGD breed, but there's annoying things too. 

Without that routine and the trust that it builds in you, you have no way to give your dog the "all-clear."  You'll get nuisance barking, and also your dog will scheme to get loose of you to go check stuff out on his or her own.  You'll get little growliness and your dog will not be acceptable in public, or even when visitors come over.  You don't want a dog 100 plus pounds (50-ish kilos) being anything but sweet and gentle to strangers!

Hmmm, thanks guys. It's good to get the nitty gritty of just what exactly is involved in keeping these dogs happy. I still dearly want one, but I think I don't have what it takes to make it work in suburbia. I have too much else on my plate. My schedule is too unpredictable and I spend too much time away from home and we are forever getting strangers in the yard dropping things off and whatnot. I think where we are now would just not be suitable. It just seems like there are so many homes butting up against ours and there's always something going on. At the moment the neighbours are building a shed (illegally) on our fenceline right by the house. Penny and Kivi are generally pretty good with it, but Penny gets upset when people start talking down there. She's been here about 6 months with us and she doesn't think it's normal for there to be people talking next door. Our neighbours that hate barking dogs often have fights and shout things from their balcony that overlooks our yard except for all the trees and shrubs that give us privacy. Sometimes it sounds like they're in our yard, though. I don't think it would be fair to bring an LGD into that environment and expect them to accept it all the way Penny and Kivi more or less do.

Maybe one day when I have convinced my partner to move further out from the city. 

I'm still wildly in love with Tibetan Mastiffs. I think they might be marginally better than a LGD, but I would have to look into it more. I think there's a good chance I'd end up with an Akita in the end. 

 Corvus, I think it's awesome to make the choice that's in the dog's best interest, despite your clear love for these breeds and desire to have one.  If more prospective owners took the time and energy to research the breed, and not just from web pages that tout the advantages, with no mention of the disadvantages that can crop up, then there would not be so many dogs losing their homes, and sometimes their lives.  I have no doubt that someday you will be on some nice acreage, happily investigating "what's out there" with your LGD.