Is using Livestock Guardian dogs a miracle solution for the predator-livestock conflict? 

Maybe you have seen them before, a big - often white - dog in between a flock of sheep, following them where they go. These are livestock guardian dogs. They blend easily in with the sheep because of their size and color. They are typically bigger than an average dog, weighing between 45 kg and 65 kg, heavy enough to scare away bigger predators like wolves and big wild cats, like the puma, the main predator we have here in the Magallanes region. 

Most of the information about these dogs is about how well they work in the battle of reducing the kills of livestock. But is this dog the miracle solution that people make it out to be? Do you just put it into the herd, and you no longer have to worry about dogs or sheep? This article covers information about the use of guardian dogs, their training, and the challenges they can cause to livestock animals. 

From East Asia to Magallanes 

Using livestock guardian dogs has a long history, and it has its origins in Europe and East Asia when sheep and goats were domesticated around 9,000 B.C. Around 4,000 years ago, the nomads started to settle, and that's when the evolution of the guardian dogs started. 

In Chile, using livestock guardian dogs is still something new, and in the region of Magallanes, the first family that brought a livestock guardian dog was the local Kusanovic family back in 2007. It was a vet that brought them from Canada, and they were brought here to breed what would be the first litter of working livestock guardian dogs in Magallanes. 

The first breed here was the Italian Maremma, a big white dog that is often mistaken for the more known breed, the Great Pyrenees, which is very similar looking. The vet was advising the family on how to train the dogs to become livestock guardian dogs. Little by little, more and more estancias started to implement a guardian dog as part of their sheep farming management, together with the sheepdogs. The sheepdogs are used to manage the sheep (moving them from one place to another). Guardian dogs are used to protect the sheep.

Guardian dogs in Estancia Laguna Amarga

As a relative of the Kusanovic family, the Goic family got their first Livestock Guardian dog as a gift from their uncle, Jose Kusanovic*. In these years, the Goic family had a small flock of sheep for personal use. The number of pumas was slowly increasing in that area, and the pumas started to get closer to the house where the sheep were roaming, so having the guardian dog around helped keep the pumas away.

In 2017, José Kusanovic gave another guardian dog, Sarmiento, to the family because the number of pumas was increasing even more in the area.  

The re-introduction of sheep farming during the pandemic

During the pandemic, Estancia Laguna Amarga reintroduced a small herd of sheep, and with this reintroduction, the livestock guardian dogs as well, which helped reduce the puma attacks together with daily grassing with the sheep. At that time, they had 10 guardian dogs together with 1,000 sheep. Read more about that in this article HERE. Sheep do always stay together, they are constantly moving and will separate into smaller groups, walking in different directions. This is why 1 guardian dog is often not enough, you will need various dogs. Today, the Goic family has reduced the sheep population by 500 sheep, but the same amount of dogs. 

An untrained dog is worse than the livestock predator

Having a livestock guardian dog doesn't solve everything, and the dog can have the opposite effect if it is not well-trained or if it is not being corrected for bad behavior. It has happened that guardian dogs have attacked and killed sheep and newborn lambs. Dania Goic, remembers one of the challenges they had with one guardian dog in particular:

“In 2020 we bought sheep from different estancias, and together with one of the flocks we bought, we got an experienced guardian dog. He worked perfectly until we mixed this flock of sheep with another flock of sheep, and he started to be aggressive toward some of them. At first, we thought it was because they were sheep from another estancia, but when we investigated the cases, we realized he were aggessive towards some of the older and weaker sheep. We therefore decided to separate him from the sheep”. 

Guardian dogs killing newborn lamb

It is not unusual that guardian dogs to kill the newborn lamb, and there can be different reasons for that. One can be the smell of blood etc. that trickers the dog’s instinct. Another reason can be that the dog doesn't know how to react to them, it's something new, and they might be too harsh on them, especially young dogs that sometimes want to play with them:

“When we have young dogs around the newborn lamb, we have to pay a lot of attention to them the first 2 weeks and correct them if they are being too playful around them or aggressive. When our sheep started to give birth, we kept the sheep close to the main house to avoid puma kills. To not stress the dogs with a lot of small lambs all over the place, we kept them tired up the first 2 weeks until they got used to being around them” says Dania. 

This is why it is important that guardian dogs are easy to handle and used to be tied up. Usually, you will have a master dog, that is used to working around sheep and lamb, and it will show the other newer dogs have to behave. 

It is a constant training and correction

Many can have the impression that you just need to make sure that the guardian dog grows up with the livestock to create a “family bond”, and then they can live the rest of their lives with them, protecting them from everything harmful. It is not that simple, as Dania explains:

“It is a lot of work to have guardian dogs. You have to give them food every day because if you don't, they might leave the herd in the search of food or even kill native fauna. They have to be trained into being handled by humans when you need to treat them for parasites or any sickness or wound. You have to have the time to observe how they work and correct them right away if they are leaving the herd, being aggressive, etc.”. 

Adding a guardian dog, especially a young one, is not that simple. Sometimes the dog just doesn't grow up to be as good as you thought it will. Even though the breeds are bred for their strong protection instinct, you never know how the puppy will be when it grows up. 

How to train a livestock guardian dog from a puppy

The guardian dogs have a strong inherent protector instinct and this instinct is what the owners need to develop. The training starts when they are puppies: they grow up together with the sheep, mainly mixing the puppies with lamps. This way they create a bond with the sheep, believing they are part of their family, and they need to be protected. It is important that the dogs create a stronger bond with the sheep than with humans to avoid the dog seeing their humans as the family that needs protection and causes it to leave the herd. 

If you see a working livestock guardian dog with its herd, it is important not to encourage it to leave it by calling it, even though it looks cute and friendly. It is doing important work, and interfering with its work can cause big issues for the owners. A dog that leaves the herd, is not protecting the herd. This is why the bond between humans and dogs cannot be too strong.

Photo: Olivia VanDyke, Pachamama Film

*More info about the breeder José Kusanovic can be found on his website (it is in Spanish): https://www.elsenordelospastores.com