How To Protect Goats From Dogs?

[GoldenTreePackGoats]

Dogs are my biggest frustration, no dog should be off leash if it doesn't come back to you the moment it's called, just my opinion. We bring pepper spray, one per person, we try to keep our eyes far a head and back to see the incoming threat. Once we see an off leash dog, we say, "call your dog." Most people in this area tell us, that there dog has never bitten anyone or anything, I would say 9/10 times the dogs hackles go up and they growl at us, luckily we've only had human bites and no goats have been harmed. I always position the goats behind me (which they do already) and stay between the goat and the dog.

At some point we plan to look into maybe a cattle prod as our 2nd defense, but if our goats are on a leash and a dog decides to rip into them anyways our absolute last resort is to shoot the dog. We have a dog, and love him dearly, I would never want to take anyones best friend away, but my goats are just as close to me as my dog and they are doing a job for me, its our responsibility to keep them safe.