Trouble with Newer Livestock Dog

[blackie's maiden]

Our female half akbash-pyrenees now a royal pain! Spayed, she still has the hots for neighbor's two intact males that roam free. They seem to come get her. We know for a while she was curling the bottom of our net fencing under and getting out that way. Hubby tried putting a stake in between each t-post so fence is tacked down every 4 feet instead of 8 feet.  Still gets out. Next tactic, hot wire on top of fence in case she was climbing out. Still, escape. She did have goats, Paws..our old legs, to cuddle with and two 24-7 access barns and a good square meal every day.  Only way we have been able to keep her home is penning her in our old.buck yard. During day, she is alone and no barn access. Nights, we pen goats and other dog in there with her so goats have nighttime protection from coyotes. Nights we close the pasture-side door to that gost barn so she and others do have barn access at night. Meanwhile, with no dogs in main pasture, coyotes are picking off our poultry.

We spent over $1000 for a run-in in that smaller pen for our IR horse but can't use it now for that purpose.

Got this dog because our wonderful Paws is showing signs he is getting too old for the job. We paid $100 for this female plus more to have her spayed. A lot of money and time to throw away or give away and start over with another dog. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

[Sanhestar]

sometimes the spaying doesn't "take" = some errand tissue remains and produces hormones.

Think about asking a vet to have her hormonal blood levels checked, if that's the case.

[Nanno]

Shock collar training worked wonders for our roaming dog, Pluto. He got the urge to roam before he was neutered and then after he got fixed the wanderlust remained. I ended up having to chain him in our yard during the daytime for three years (he was penned with the goats at night) until we finally broke down and bought a shock collar last year. We got one of the fancy Garmin tracking collars that alerts me when he leaves the area. It was very expensive but it's proven its worth, and I look on it as an investment that will be good for training many more dogs in the future. We trained Pluto to come when I hit the beep alert. If he doesn't listen to the beep I give him a quick, low zap. If he continues to leave, he gets a good solid shock. He tried to ignore the hard shock when we first started using it, but eventually he realized that his expeditions weren't worth it. Pluto rarely leaves the property any more, but when he does, all I have to do is tap the beep button and he heads straight home immediately.

You can buy much cheaper shock collars without the GPS tracker, but then you have to be alert so you catch her in the act of leaving the area. If she sneaks away even one time without getting zapped she'll keep trying. Another option is to do what I did and stretch a runner chain out in the pasture in a central location. Make sure there's shelter and water there. Pluto had a little doghouse and two big shade trees. It was in an area where the goats hang out a lot and even though he couldn't go around the property with them as he should, he could still keep an eye on them and if something seemed wrong or if he saw a predator his loud bark was enough to scare the predator and warn the goats to run to him (which they nearly always did). When we chained Pluto we made sure he got at least one walk every day, plus our goat pen is very large so he was able to run as much as he wanted when he went in there at night. I've heard that females are generally less prone to continue wandering once they reach maturity. It could be that chaining her during the day for a year would get you over the hump. It's not ideal, but having her roam the countryside is a lot worse.

[blackie's maiden]

Thanks, both of you. We are probably going to make the long drive to our good.vet some 80 miles.away later.this week. I just may load Xena up too for.that hormonal check.

Meanwhile, Nan, can I ask for make, model number, etc. of that shocker with GPS you used and a contact where you bought it? Thanks, all. More.proof what a great website and people this is.

[Nanno]

We bought our collar direct from Garmin. It's the Alpha 100/TT model and it cost around $800 (yikes!). That's why it took us over two years to finally break down and get one. It's one of those things that has way more features than we need, but there's no good middle ground. Either the collars don't have all the features we want or they have way more features than we know what to do with. We got it almost a year ago and we started out by training Pluto to come to the beep tone during our daily walks. Once he was responding well to the beep tone, we started letting him loose with the collar unsupervised. I would randomly use the beep tone to call him to the house from time to time and when he showed up I'd give him a treat. However, any time he started running loose outside our property, his excitement tended to overwhelm his ability or desire to listen and I'd have to use the zap feature to force him to listen to the beeper. There were a few times when he started running loose with other dogs that I had to zap him at full strength and keep my finger on it for several seconds to get his attention. He has very thick hair and sometimes a very thick skull! There was a neighborhood LGD that kept coming over to our place and luring Pluto away from home. He quit coming around after he touched Pluto a few times while I had the zap button engaged! Pluto now knows he's not allowed to run off and play with other dogs. One time I zapped him in the act of attacking my neighbor's cattle dog on my neighbor's property! If my neighbor had seen that, he would have been well within his rights to shoot Pluto on the spot.

A cool thing that Pluto just learned in the last month is to wait near the house until I put his tracking collar on. Pluto used to try to sneak off before I could get his collar on, but I think he's finally realized that the collar is his ticket to freedom. This month we've had lots of Christmas things to go to, and when Phil and I are both gone for several hours we put Pluto on his runner chain since there's no one to watch him. Pluto has finally figured out that when he doesn't have his collar, it means he's probably going to be tied up for the day. A couple of weeks ago, Daisy took off running after something in the woods, but Pluto hovered around the house whining. I went out to put his collar on and he was wriggling so much in excitement I almost couldn't fasten it. As soon as it was on, he took off like a rocket into the woods. I was thrilled that he actually waited for me to get his collar before disappearing. I watched on the tracker while he ran just past the edge of our property and then brought himself back home before I had to recall him.

[blackie's maiden]

Thank you so much. I will definitely look into it.