Guardian propspects

[seth s]

My dogs don't chase rabbits or deer. We got Daisy when she was 3 years old and already mostly trained, but we got Pluto (the Anatolian) as a pup and we had to train him not to chase deer. It didn't take him long. They are incredibly smart dogs and they don't have a strong prey/chase instinct to begin with so it's easy to train them not to chase non-predator species. In fact, they don't really even chase predator species. They more just stand between the predator and the goats and bark their heads off. They'll chase long enough to drive the predator away, but then they circle right back to the flock/herd. This is smart because coyotes will circle around and come back to the goats if one of them can lure the dog away. My dogs aren't much of rabbit chasers. They'll sometimes chase one for a lark but they've never gotten one. A rabbit ran right under their noses the other day and both dogs just looked at it.

Now, the other day something strange happened. Pluto took off into the woods and I heard a lot of screaming. I thought a baby deer had gotten startled into our fence and was caught so I ran to investigate. Instead, Pluto came trouting proudly out with the screaming fawn in his mouth! I was FURIOUS! I yelled at him to drop it and he did immediately. It was ok. He hadn't punctured it. I don't know if he was bringing it back to kill or if he was bringing it back to me because he thought it was a lost/injured animal. At least he hadn't hurt it and he did drop it immediately when I hollered at him.


I bet the deer incident was scary and exciting at the same time!   Thanks for the help and feedback in this,  the barking is a bit of a concern for me as I don't want to be "that Neighbor"  I live on a island, and we don't have bears or cougars luckily, but lots of coyotes, and dogs.  Might look deeper into the Llama as a guard animal.