Not a Straight Line

Last week, I posted an essay about needing our youngest livestock guardian dog, Dillon, to do some actual guarding. We'd heard that there was a mountain lion in the vicinity of a small group of our sheep, and our two older dogs were already with their own groups. Until last week, Dillon had been with a small group of yearling ewes we keep at our home place to train our border collie pups. But last week was the real deal - Dillon went to work!

On the upside, Dillon kept his sheep safe. I installed game cameras to see what kinds of predators might be in the neighborhood. I didn't get any images of mountain lions, but I captured several photos of coyotes within 5-6 feet of our electro-net fencing (which is also a predator deterrent). I'll pull Dillon's GPS collar tonight to see what he was doing with the coyotes visited - but the bottom line is, we had predators around, and we lost no sheep. Good boy, Dillon.

But at just under 8 months of age, Dillon is still a teenager - and a teenage boy, at that. Dillon took a strong liking to one of the ewes in the group he was guarding - and I mean he REALLY liked her. In an inappropriate and explicit way, if you get my meaning. When he wasn't "liking" her, he followed her around the paddock, halfheartedly chasing her on occasion. I was very relieved that I had not scheduled any school field trips last week. I corrected the behavior when I was able to (for more on correction vs. punishment, see my post Final Exams from last month). Last night, I hauled one of the larger groups (and their dog, Elko) back to this ranch - and Dillon went back to guarding his yearling ewes at the house.

This kind of behavior is not necessarily unusual for a puppy at this stage of development (at least in my experience). Some might suggest putting Dillon with an older dog - and that may be something I try down the road. I've had more luck in putting a teenage dog with a group of sheep that will discourage this behavior. Next week, we'll bring our ram battery back from their summer quarters to get them ready for breeding - and Dillon will go with them. I suspect that the rams will be able to offer a more timely (and more effective) correction than I was able to provide.

Training any animal, in my experience, rarely progresses in a straight line. There are always set backs and frustrations, along (hopefully) with progress and breakthroughs. This kind of behavior in an 8-month-old puppy is not optimal, but it's not unexpected. If the behavior persists, however, Dillon will need to find another line of work. We'll give him every chance to learn the kind of respect and manners we expect from our guard dogs - what good is a dog that keeps predators away so he can stress the livestock himself?!