Market Farming

["Dori Green" <dorigreen00 AT hotmail.com>]

My "old lady" general farm dog is part Border and part Golden Retriever.  
She'll bring 'em in for me on command but lacks patience with kids (goat or 
people).  Typical of her Border ancestors.

GPs and Maremmas are often available for adoption from well-meaning but 
misguided people who tried to make them into companion dogs in the city.  
LGD-L is one e-mail list where notices of adoptions can be found (also dogs 
for sale).

I got a GP/Maremma adoptee a couple of years ago.  Somebody had left him 
running loose with no socialization until he was almost five months old.  He 
sat in the house and stared at the wall, so I put him outside on a cable 
run.  He sat and stared at the tree.  Finally, since it was so obvious he 
was just going to keep refusing to eat until he died, I turned him loose.  
He guarded my goats, my old dog, my cats, me, my poultry, the neighbor's 
Morgan horses, the other neighbor's cows, and everybody else in the 
surrounding 200 or so acres.  Coyotes are an epidemic in this area but not 
on our hill, thanks to Ragnar!  I visited all of the neighbors and explained 
about LGDs and the job that Rags was doing, and everybody was cool as long 
as I kept up with my program of calling him in and distracting him with a 
cookie when he barked in the middle of the night -- rewarded him for doing 
his job and gave whatever was exciting him time to vamoose.

Unfortunately, one of my hunting neighbors expressed concern that it looked 
like he was hunting deer -- for which the hunters around here will shoot a 
dog and not think twice.  He once spent a week in the hedgerow guarding a 
wounded doe until she could travel again (I guess he thought she was a 
funny-looking goat), so I think he was just on patrol and not hunting.  Rags 
disappeared on Hallowe'en Weekend and his buddy from down the road showed up 
at home with a hole in her chest, the size of a small-caliper bullet or 
target arrow (there's a 3D range next door).

I miss him terribly even though he was a difficult dog -- he was aloof on 
the side of autistic, a very new experience for somebody who's lived her 
whole life with those neurotic eager-to-please Borders.  I will get an LGD 
again, this time nothing older than 8 weeks so I can teach it to tolerate 
being confined when it has to be, and not until I've got at least two acres 
completely enclosed with woven wire.

Upshot:  I recommend LGDs wholeheartedly, but beware of the socialization 
problems that can come along with them and be sure of the acceptance and 
understanding of your neighbors.

They are better than a determined buck at getting out of the best of fences, 
BTW, and are strangely loose-jointed so seldom have trouble shrugging out of 
a body harness.  I never ever tie any animal by a collar.

Dori Green
Ash Grove Community Farm
Corning, NY
http://www.ic.org/agrove

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