Livestock Guardian Dogs

Livestock Guardian Dogs are a curious group of breeds.

They’re not herding dogs, they’re herd protection dogs and they’re quite good at it. I had a client once that worked at a Cheetah rescue in South Africa that incorporated livestock guardian dogs into their program. The goat herders were losing goats to cheetahs so they were killing the cheetahs. The rescue imprinted the livestock guardian dogs while they were young on goats and gave them to the goat herders in exchange for the promise to stop killing the cheetahs.

Anyway, below you’ll find a short well done video about livestock guardian dogs. Here’s a short description: “Ranchers who struggle to coexist with large predators are finding new hope in old dog breeds. While these Old World livestock guardian dog breeds have successfully defended livestock from predators for thousands of years in Europe and Asia, they remain relatively unknown in the American West. Explore how they work for one family, and what it means for the maintenance of large predators, like the wolf, on the landscape.”