Our Maremma Guard Sheepdogs

For those of you that did not make it to visit our ranch last weekend, I will introduce you to our 3 Maremma guard dogs.  We are in an area with a large coyote population, a few wolves, black bear and of course the occasional panther sighting.  Living in a remote area we do have occasional visits from those animals.  We like to provide as much protection for our Alpacas, besides good fencing.  We invested in our first Maremma that we named Pan (from Greek mythology).  We placed him with the "girls" at the young age of 8 weeks.

Pan

 After a year, we decided we needed at least one or two more to help Pan with the guarding.  He can't be at all places on the 25 acre ranch at the sametime and he needs a rest from his job once in awhile.  Through the Internet we had learned of a litter of Maremma's that were abandoned and in need of good "working" homes.   So to make a long story short, we adopted two of the litter.  Their names are Furio & Meadow.  We received them at the age of about 8 to 9 months.  It has taken quite a bit of work, patience and understanding to make these two into good guard dogs.  They were in wonderful foster homes, but were not being trained for livestock guarding.  They have such a need to guard that I have included a picture of Meadow from this morning. She is guarding an empty beer can that my husband left on the table.  They are awesome guard dogs!  They do take their job very seriously.  We do appreciate them, as they do alert us at night of anything that they feel is a threat to the Alpacas. 

Furio

 

Meadow