When I got the first call from my friend Katie about Keena, she said into the phone, "You're looking for a Great Pyrenees to guard the goats, right?"
"Yes," I replied, "Why?"
"I'm at bunko and one of the gals I play with has a daughter giving away a two year old Great Pyrenees."
My heart sank. Two years old. I don't even know if it's possible to train a two year old GP to guard livestock. Certainly, I knew that I wasn't the person to do it. I wasn't even sure I had what it would take to train a puppy... The breed is a natural at the job, but even so, they still need to bond with their charges. They have to be grown past their puppy stages into a dog that can guard the farm. According to all the books I've read, this needs to happen by 12 weeks at the VERY latest.
"Has it ever been around livestock?"
Katie said she would ask, and if it had, pass on my information to her friend. I wasn't expecting to hear any more.
The next day, however, I did hear more. The daughter called me to talk about the dog.
Turns out, she's a cattle rancher. In consolidating her cattle farm with the one her brother had been running, she also got a herd of goats that her brother brought over. (a move she wasn't expecting) Her ranch boarders the outskirts of a city near me, and while her ranch certainly had ROOM for the goats, it was not fenced well enough to keep them ON the ranch. Instead, they wandered into the nearby suburbs. A LOT.
Eventually, brother showed up with a Great Pyrenees dog. "Put it with the goats." He told her. So she did, but the dog wasn't a herding dog, so it did nothing to keep the goats from getting into the city. It became evident that the goats had to go, and so they were taken to auction and sold. That left the dog her brother had left without a job. The dog had also arrived pregnant, unbeknown to her, and delivered a litter of puppies. The dog took her puppies wandering with her on patrol, and the puppies were too small to wander without supervision, so mom dog and her pups were moved to the sister's house just a ways from the ranch, and just inside the city. As the puppies grew, mom dog would wander to the barn, and it became evident to the sister that momma dog needed animals to be with.
So the decision to give her away came to be.
I couldn't believe the story as I was hearing it. I knew the goat story was true, because as it often happens in this ever so small world, I had a friend that lived in the area the goats got into. She had told me about the herd of about 40 goats that had just appeared one day, and would visit once in a while and that one day just stopped coming.
Of all animals her newest owner KNEW she was good with, it was goats. She got along with other dogs on the ranch. She was kind to the kids there. It was like she had been living a life in preparation to be just what I needed at just the exact right moment.
I went to pick her up that night. She was matted and muddy. I could tell her newest owners hadn't known what to do with her. She showed every sign that all the books I looked at said a puppy should show in order to be suited for the job of Livestock Guardian. Except she was a grown dog. She wasn't a puppy. She didn't need training. I still can't believe it.
So I brought her home. She spent that first night in the barn, separate from the goats, but close enough to see them. She has not been separated from them since. She is everything I could ever ask for. Her breed has a reputation for barking more than they need to. So far, she has only barked twice. They have a reputation for climbing fences. She doesn't even try. She seems to like the chickens just fine, and wags her tail at the cats when they venture near. She tries in the most polite and quiet way to visit with the goats. They aren't ready yet. When they say so with their body language, and pull up to give a head butt, she understands before they have to do it, and ducks away to lie down instead.
She's stolen a place in my heart. It's an honor to have her. I can't explain what it feels like. I'm in awe of her. Of her place here. Of the job she fills. I understand now, when shepherds say "I can't imagine having a flock/herd without them..."
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