Dog

A guardian dog lives with the stock rather than with people. Raised among sheep, goats or poultry from its first weeks, it comes to treat them as its own group and drives off anything that approaches them, with no handler present and nobody sending it. It earns its place where the ground grazed is too large or too rough for predator-proof fencing to be affordable.

One piece of husbandry decides whether it works at all: the dog has to bond to the species it will guard before it is about sixteen weeks old. That window cannot be reopened, and an adult dog brought in later will not reliably work. Even bonded, it is not the complete answer it is often sold as. One documented goat operation cut losses of young kids from 24 percent to a steady 6 to 8 percent, but only by running guardian dogs alongside herders, herding dogs, night penning and careful pasture choice; the dogs alone fell short once the herd split into several groups, because one animal cannot be in three places.

The dog does not stay beside the stock. Measured ranging averages about 200 m (650 ft) from the flock, with excursions approaching 2 km (1.2 miles), farther at night and unrelated to whether a predator is near. Guidance therefore asks for roughly 400 m (a quarter mile) between working dogs and any ground people walk or camp on, which constrains where both the stock and the public space go. Large predators can kill the dog, so where they are present the number of dogs matters more than the breed. It needs a feeding station the stock cannot raid, because a dog fed from the stock's trough competes with the animals it guards, and hunger does not make it work harder. Water, veterinary care, parasite control and watching a young dog for signs it is worrying the stock all follow. Working life is shorter than natural life, so the next dog is usually bonded before the first is finished.