Guardianship
Jun. 12th, 2019 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI have two livestock guardian dogs: Thea (Amalthea) is a maremma and Avallu is a tornjak. If you're not familiar, these are all basically regional equivalents of the pyrenees. They're bred to protect things they love from things they think are hazardous and that behaviour comes from deep generational instincts.
Often these instincts play out in unexpected ways. A dog might start guarding its food bowl or food location (love) from humans, for instance, because it learns that humans might take away its food (hazard). It might guard its sheep (love) from a human if it perceives the human to interfere with the sheep by shearing or helping deliver babies (hazard). It might guard its property line from strangers or bicycles (definitely scary hazards) even if those strangers are friends of the property owner.
My Theapup came to me when she was 3 months old; she was bred and kept by a small farm to be a guardian but kept escaping from the farmyard to go sit on the porch by the house. They were looking for a new and suitable home for her. Meanwhile I was looking for a guardian dog that liked people a lot (easier to train, and it would be working in close proximity with me on a hobby farm and not off in the back 40 with the cows) and that wouldn't escape much (guardian dogs mostly like to escape so they can mark a ring around their territory and keep things away from the fence rather than trying to guard from within them). She seemed like a perfect match for my situation, and it turns out she is. She grew up to be very tiny for a guardian dog and to absolutely thrive on human attention: Avallu barks to keep people off my property whereas Thea keeps them away by licking and happy-wiggling them to death. She snaps into guardian mode for bad animals and scary bicycles/quads/that bad red pickup truck though, and she's exceptionally persistent at audibly marking territory when there's something around at night. That does mean she barks intermittently all night, but it's the choice she makes about how to warn animals away rather than escaping the fence and confronting them.
Thea is also very skilled at livestock management. She comes running to break up goose fights and she uses subtle body positioning to prevent fights. When I'm outside she is very commonly close to the spot where my right fingers hang in the air, right beside me. It took some training but she doesn't jump up and she asks for attention by sitting or lying down. As long as I seem like everything is ok she'll roll with the punches, and she tends to look to me for direction for at least a fraction of a second before she makes more complicated decisions. Did I mention she completely adores humans?
Avallu is entirely different from Thea, which is good because I couldn't handle two of that level of energy. He was raised in Germany by folks who showed him and who raised horses. The tornjak is an exceptionally rare breed and has only recently been recognised as an official breed; they're supposed to be more trainable than most very independent guardian dogs. He came to me at a year and a half of age; his breeder speaks mostly German and told me he was very sensitive. I thought that was an awkward translation choice at the time. She'd selected him for me because he's very guard-y.
Avallu is very sensitive. He's incredibly quick to learn, he loves routine, he's strong-willed, and he really really wants to do the right thing. He's quick to worry and if there's doubt will interpret a situation as harmful. Often, the right thing for him can feel like guarding and posturing. This dog is like having a teenage boy in the house, maybe one with an intense crush on me. When I come back from a trip he's no more than a couple feet away from me at all times, but when we snuggle he backs up to me so his butt is just touching my leg. When he's feeling relaxed and in comfortable company he's almost always pon his back asking for belly rubs. When a stranger comes to the gate, though...
Maybe I should step back a little and set the scene. When I moved onto the property it had a bunch of barbed wire fence which the dogs could easily get out through,and no front gate. Very few people in my town have dog-proof fencing, and dogs roam around at-will. Some visit the country or town or specific stores at various times, some hang out by their own yards, etc. So when I got my dogs I had fencing planned and budgeted for, could not find a fencing contractor, but didn't worry about it too much. The dogs hung out on my driveway by the road and kept everything away. They started chasing cars, I failed to find a fencing contractor (small town, lots of wildfires) and eventually did the fencing myself. By then it was too late: people with cars were scary objects (in part because I think people were slowing down the cars and opening the door to kick my dogs) and so were passers-by (my dogs absolutely barked at pedestrians, some of whom I think escalated by throwing rocks which of course escalated their threat in my dogs' estimation in a very bad cycle). If I'd got that fencing up sooner I could have reduced my dogs' exposure to cars and people as hazardous things (and given my neighbours less grief, but hey).
So my dogs have got pretty fence-reactive. Because most of the things on the other side of the fence are threats in their mind, anything on the other side of the fence is more likely to be a threat and is probably bad. It's not helped by the way the neighbourhood dogs try and dig into my yard under the fence, and how my dogs have to defend the fence from the inside because they can't get out and just scare those dogs away, so the exposure is lengthened. Our minds work like this too! When we associate something with bad, we're more likely to expect that related things are also bad. So.
Thea is great with people. Avallu is slow to trust and tends to worry, and when people come to the fence he growls and if he can he'll nip from behind. This is not necessarily bad in some cases (I'd like to discourage strangers from walking in) but it's very bad in two specific instances: when I have friends over and if someone comes specifically looking to start trouble.
If someone comes specifically looking to start trouble, if they come onto my property and are doing something awful, Avallu wants to protect things. I expect if they were doing something awful enough, he might bite. I've had people come onto the property to yell at me and he was getting pretty agitated but didn't bite, but those people were yelling from a little distance and not physically threatening me or him. I expect that if someone hit me, or yelled at me and then hit him, he would bite them. And even if they were tresspassing, even if they were on my property, even if they were assaulting me... if he bit someone he'd likely have to be put down. This would break my heart completely in every way.
If someone comes trying to be friendly, my current practice is to give him lots of treats and watch me interacting with them in a friendly way. I'll also often put him in the house if I don't have half an hour to spend on the acclimatization process. He's so agitated when someone new comes that he often won't remember his training, and I'm not sure how to acclimatize him to new people coming since I don't have a huge supply of new folks who are happy to just hang around while I train. And... I think he doesn't completely trust me to make the right decision, so he feels like he has to protect rather than looking to me first and then protecting.
All of which is to set up for the amazing part: we've had a couple breakthroughs. Last weekend I had 2 sets of folks drop by. The first set I took him and put him in the carport while showing them around. The second set he was barking a lot, and when I came up to the fence and looked at him he turned around and walked several feet back towards the carport. He's been showing similar behaviours with the pigs, too: the mama pig runs at him and threatens him, so he's become sensitized to her, but has been getting really good about coming back or away from her when called. So I think he's starting to trust me in these very stressful situations.
My hope is to eventually get him trained on command to go into "his yard" (which I want to fence off seperately) or "home" or something like that, a place where he feels safe. To get him to do that when there's a threat requires he trust me. So I think we're on the way.
(I have a limited amount of dog training time and treat resources, which I deliberately spent on getting the dogs to come when called and getting them to never jump up for attention. This is going to be the next thing I expand into).
Anyhow, I'm very proud of my puppy Avallu, who's growing up and learning that sometimes he has to walk away from a confrontation.
(Incidentally Avallu is very very good with small baby birds; when there are new babies he lies very close and follows up on any distressed cheeping to make sure nothing is wrong. He also warns me every year when I start up the woodstove for the first time, coming into the awful indoors to find me and make sure I am calm and reassuring about this fire in the house).
Anyhow. My dogs.
Often these instincts play out in unexpected ways. A dog might start guarding its food bowl or food location (love) from humans, for instance, because it learns that humans might take away its food (hazard). It might guard its sheep (love) from a human if it perceives the human to interfere with the sheep by shearing or helping deliver babies (hazard). It might guard its property line from strangers or bicycles (definitely scary hazards) even if those strangers are friends of the property owner.
My Theapup came to me when she was 3 months old; she was bred and kept by a small farm to be a guardian but kept escaping from the farmyard to go sit on the porch by the house. They were looking for a new and suitable home for her. Meanwhile I was looking for a guardian dog that liked people a lot (easier to train, and it would be working in close proximity with me on a hobby farm and not off in the back 40 with the cows) and that wouldn't escape much (guardian dogs mostly like to escape so they can mark a ring around their territory and keep things away from the fence rather than trying to guard from within them). She seemed like a perfect match for my situation, and it turns out she is. She grew up to be very tiny for a guardian dog and to absolutely thrive on human attention: Avallu barks to keep people off my property whereas Thea keeps them away by licking and happy-wiggling them to death. She snaps into guardian mode for bad animals and scary bicycles/quads/that bad red pickup truck though, and she's exceptionally persistent at audibly marking territory when there's something around at night. That does mean she barks intermittently all night, but it's the choice she makes about how to warn animals away rather than escaping the fence and confronting them.
Thea is also very skilled at livestock management. She comes running to break up goose fights and she uses subtle body positioning to prevent fights. When I'm outside she is very commonly close to the spot where my right fingers hang in the air, right beside me. It took some training but she doesn't jump up and she asks for attention by sitting or lying down. As long as I seem like everything is ok she'll roll with the punches, and she tends to look to me for direction for at least a fraction of a second before she makes more complicated decisions. Did I mention she completely adores humans?
Avallu is entirely different from Thea, which is good because I couldn't handle two of that level of energy. He was raised in Germany by folks who showed him and who raised horses. The tornjak is an exceptionally rare breed and has only recently been recognised as an official breed; they're supposed to be more trainable than most very independent guardian dogs. He came to me at a year and a half of age; his breeder speaks mostly German and told me he was very sensitive. I thought that was an awkward translation choice at the time. She'd selected him for me because he's very guard-y.
Avallu is very sensitive. He's incredibly quick to learn, he loves routine, he's strong-willed, and he really really wants to do the right thing. He's quick to worry and if there's doubt will interpret a situation as harmful. Often, the right thing for him can feel like guarding and posturing. This dog is like having a teenage boy in the house, maybe one with an intense crush on me. When I come back from a trip he's no more than a couple feet away from me at all times, but when we snuggle he backs up to me so his butt is just touching my leg. When he's feeling relaxed and in comfortable company he's almost always pon his back asking for belly rubs. When a stranger comes to the gate, though...
Maybe I should step back a little and set the scene. When I moved onto the property it had a bunch of barbed wire fence which the dogs could easily get out through,and no front gate. Very few people in my town have dog-proof fencing, and dogs roam around at-will. Some visit the country or town or specific stores at various times, some hang out by their own yards, etc. So when I got my dogs I had fencing planned and budgeted for, could not find a fencing contractor, but didn't worry about it too much. The dogs hung out on my driveway by the road and kept everything away. They started chasing cars, I failed to find a fencing contractor (small town, lots of wildfires) and eventually did the fencing myself. By then it was too late: people with cars were scary objects (in part because I think people were slowing down the cars and opening the door to kick my dogs) and so were passers-by (my dogs absolutely barked at pedestrians, some of whom I think escalated by throwing rocks which of course escalated their threat in my dogs' estimation in a very bad cycle). If I'd got that fencing up sooner I could have reduced my dogs' exposure to cars and people as hazardous things (and given my neighbours less grief, but hey).
So my dogs have got pretty fence-reactive. Because most of the things on the other side of the fence are threats in their mind, anything on the other side of the fence is more likely to be a threat and is probably bad. It's not helped by the way the neighbourhood dogs try and dig into my yard under the fence, and how my dogs have to defend the fence from the inside because they can't get out and just scare those dogs away, so the exposure is lengthened. Our minds work like this too! When we associate something with bad, we're more likely to expect that related things are also bad. So.
Thea is great with people. Avallu is slow to trust and tends to worry, and when people come to the fence he growls and if he can he'll nip from behind. This is not necessarily bad in some cases (I'd like to discourage strangers from walking in) but it's very bad in two specific instances: when I have friends over and if someone comes specifically looking to start trouble.
If someone comes specifically looking to start trouble, if they come onto my property and are doing something awful, Avallu wants to protect things. I expect if they were doing something awful enough, he might bite. I've had people come onto the property to yell at me and he was getting pretty agitated but didn't bite, but those people were yelling from a little distance and not physically threatening me or him. I expect that if someone hit me, or yelled at me and then hit him, he would bite them. And even if they were tresspassing, even if they were on my property, even if they were assaulting me... if he bit someone he'd likely have to be put down. This would break my heart completely in every way.
If someone comes trying to be friendly, my current practice is to give him lots of treats and watch me interacting with them in a friendly way. I'll also often put him in the house if I don't have half an hour to spend on the acclimatization process. He's so agitated when someone new comes that he often won't remember his training, and I'm not sure how to acclimatize him to new people coming since I don't have a huge supply of new folks who are happy to just hang around while I train. And... I think he doesn't completely trust me to make the right decision, so he feels like he has to protect rather than looking to me first and then protecting.
All of which is to set up for the amazing part: we've had a couple breakthroughs. Last weekend I had 2 sets of folks drop by. The first set I took him and put him in the carport while showing them around. The second set he was barking a lot, and when I came up to the fence and looked at him he turned around and walked several feet back towards the carport. He's been showing similar behaviours with the pigs, too: the mama pig runs at him and threatens him, so he's become sensitized to her, but has been getting really good about coming back or away from her when called. So I think he's starting to trust me in these very stressful situations.
My hope is to eventually get him trained on command to go into "his yard" (which I want to fence off seperately) or "home" or something like that, a place where he feels safe. To get him to do that when there's a threat requires he trust me. So I think we're on the way.
(I have a limited amount of dog training time and treat resources, which I deliberately spent on getting the dogs to come when called and getting them to never jump up for attention. This is going to be the next thing I expand into).
Anyhow, I'm very proud of my puppy Avallu, who's growing up and learning that sometimes he has to walk away from a confrontation.
(Incidentally Avallu is very very good with small baby birds; when there are new babies he lies very close and follows up on any distressed cheeping to make sure nothing is wrong. He also warns me every year when I start up the woodstove for the first time, coming into the awful indoors to find me and make sure I am calm and reassuring about this fire in the house).
Anyhow. My dogs.
