Livestock Guardian Dogs: Why the First Two Years Are the Hard Part
The dog was carrying a live newborn lamb across the pasture in his mouth when they caught him at it. Fourteen months old. A hundred and ten pounds of white Great Pyrenees they had fed and fenced and waited on since March of the year before. The lamb was set down, wet and bawling and unhurt, and the dog was shut in a pen, and that evening the family sat on the porch and had the conversation that gets had on a few thousand American places every year at right about that same age. Whether he had to go. The reason that conversation matters is that most of the time the answer is no, and a good many families get it wrong, and the dog they give away or shoot was eight months short of being the best help they ever had.