Great Pyrenees livestock guardian

I am still recovering from the total knee replacement surgery and can't do a lot of work with Jasper at this time.

Today I managed to walk outside (with help of the physical therapist) and found Jasper had just killed a chicken. And yesterday, a friend who has been helping feed the chickens and other animals, said she saw a chicken leg/foot laying where Jasper keeps his play toys and his food area. I am so very upset.

What do I do now? Will he continue to kill? I was told by someone that once they kill a chicken, they will continue to do so.

He will be 9 months old on Dec. 5. He is from working parents (as is his whole line of breeding) and was raised as working dog around chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, goats, pet rabbits, baby chicks, baby ducks, etc. All the pups are raised with their parents and in with all the farm animals. The person I got him from has three sets of breeding GP's and they also work the farm as livestock guardians, plus she has a couple older GP's that are beyond breeding age, but still work the farm. One of them is 16 years old.

She feeds only raw meat. She actually feeds chicken leg quarters. Bone, meat, skin, and all that. I switched him over to large breed dry food, but continued to put raw boneless chicken thighs in it. I also have added a packaged stew looking food to his dry food. His food bowl is always kept full of food. He free eats.

He has a whole bunch of toys, mostly chew toys and some for just play. He also gets the edible chew kind of treats every day. I know puppies play a lot and chew a lot. That is why I have so many chew things and play things for him. I remove some of the older toys and put out newer ones, so that he has different ones to keep him from gettng bored with them.

Please, can anyone help??? What do I do? What can I do? Is it true that he will now always kill? I love him dearly and am so upset. I don't know how in the world I would be able to part with him, but I can't have him killing.

He might might not continue to kill depends on him.

What have you done in the way of training the dog with the chickens? In my expereince, the Pyrs hit those teenager months and start to do all kinds of things they are not supposed to do. Eventually they grow up but, you need to train and watch them closely until they mature.

Will he listen to you? Does he understand that chickens are off-limits?

Jim

I do NOT advocate beating an animal, but...My 6 month old GP killed one of my muscovy ducks last week. It had landed in his pen and he killed it. I took the dead duck and whalloped him good with it and saying "BAD" in a very serious tone. A week later 2 more ended up in his pen...he never touched them.

You can also take the dead chicken and tie it to his collar and let him live with that for a few days.

There are those that don't agree with this, but it does work.

Quote:
The thing to do now is get a shock collar and WATCH him.
Any time he TOUCHES a bird, give him a shock.

It won't take many to cure him

He may or may not stop forever, but most of the time the collar does the job

I'm sorry, but shock collars are cruel and should NOT be used on ANY kind of animal, even used as supposed to.

it's called re-directing, he's still young, and being young, he is going to chase things that move, Livestock gaurdian or not, a dog is a dog is a wolf, and yes, the instinct is still there.

better now than never, have someone do this until you can, take him out on a lead, and walk him through a group of chickens, watch his reactions, if he's calm, reward him, if he stiffens, gets excited, whatever give him the proper disaproval, a gruff "AH AH" should work, continue until his attention is off of the "chase,maul,torture,kill" instinct. then when you can, take it up yourself, but keep to the program already established.

there are other ways to get a dog to behave and I do not believe slapping a shock collar around their necks is one of them, sorry

Quote:
im gonna have to try that one day....

Quote:
The thing to do now is get a shock collar and WATCH him.
Any time he TOUCHES a bird, give him a shock.

It won't take many to cure him

He may or may not stop forever, but most of the time the collar does the job

I'm sorry, but shock collars are cruel and should NOT be used on ANY kind of animal, even used as supposed to.

it's called re-directing, he's still young, and being young, he is going to chase things that move, Livestock gaurdian or not, a dog is a dog is a wolf, and yes, the instinct is still there.

better now than never, have someone do this until you can, take him out on a lead, and walk him through a group of chickens, watch his reactions, if he's calm, reward him, if he stiffens, gets excited, whatever give him the proper disaproval, a gruff "AH AH" should work, continue until his attention is off of the "chase,maul,torture,kill" instinct. then when you can, take it up yourself, but keep to the program already established.

there are other ways to get a dog to behave and I do not believe slapping a shock collar around their necks is one of them, sorry

Sorry but with an LGD who are not bred to take direction from a person (meaning they are genetically predisposed to thinking for themselves) a suggestion of a verbal correction is rediculous. A soft, biddable temperament in a dog such as a Lab or Golden this **might** work for. But for an LGD that is a solo-working animal you need to show them in some way that killing livestock is not appropriate.

I might add -- to the OP-- since you've had surgery and cannot supervise as much as you should be you might want to enlist the help of someone else to give your puppy direction. If not, maybe take him out of the pen so he doesn't kill anything else until you can be out there with him and correcting him for his prey driven behavior. A shock collar might well be just what he needs, but..that requires supervision that you might not be able to give right now.

Quote:
I'm sorry, but shock collars are cruel and should NOT be used on ANY kind of animal, even used as supposed to.

it's called re-directing, he's still young, and being young, he is going to chase things that move, Livestock gaurdian or not, a dog is a dog is a wolf, and yes, the instinct is still there.

better now than never, have someone do this until you can, take him out on a lead, and walk him through a group of chickens, watch his reactions, if he's calm, reward him, if he stiffens, gets excited, whatever give him the proper disaproval, a gruff "AH AH" should work, continue until his attention is off of the "chase,maul,torture,kill" instinct. then when you can, take it up yourself, but keep to the program already established.

there are other ways to get a dog to behave and I do not believe slapping a shock collar around their necks is one of them, sorry

Sorry but with an LGD who are not bred to take direction from a person (meaning they are genetically predisposed to thinking for themselves) a suggestion of a verbal correction is rediculous. A soft, biddable temperament in a dog such as a Lab or Golden this **might** work for. But for an LGD that is a solo-working animal you need to show them in some way that killing livestock is not appropriate.

I might add -- to the OP-- since you've had surgery and cannot supervise as much as you should be you might want to enlist the help of someone else to give your puppy direction. If not, maybe take him out of the pen so he doesn't kill anything else until you can be out there with him and correcting him for his prey driven behavior. A shock collar might well be just what he needs, but..that requires supervision that you might not be able to give right now.

Jamie,
I usually agree with you, but when you say a verbal correction is ridiculous for an LGD, you are incorrect. The assume that an independant dog requires a stronger correction is wrong. In fact, if you have a good relationship with them, an LGD is a much more sensitive dog than most other breeds. Part of their guardian duty requires an intuition and sensitivty to their charges, which carries over to their human. My dogs rarely require anything more than a verbal correction, and a mild one at that. Being harsh with an LGD is the best way to make them nasty. I have also worked with lots of rescues and the "aggressive" ones are the ones whose owners were to firm with them

Now,, I DO agree with the part about taking him out for now. At 9 mos old, he's really too young to be alone with them anyway.

Quote:
Sorry but with an LGD who are not bred to take direction from a person (meaning they are genetically predisposed to thinking for themselves) a suggestion of a verbal correction is rediculous. A soft, biddable temperament in a dog such as a Lab or Golden this **might** work for. But for an LGD that is a solo-working animal you need to show them in some way that killing livestock is not appropriate.

I might add -- to the OP-- since you've had surgery and cannot supervise as much as you should be you might want to enlist the help of someone else to give your puppy direction. If not, maybe take him out of the pen so he doesn't kill anything else until you can be out there with him and correcting him for his prey driven behavior. A shock collar might well be just what he needs, but..that requires supervision that you might not be able to give right now.

Jamie,
I usually agree with you, but when you say a verbal correction is ridiculous for an LGD, you are incorrect. The assume that an independant dog requires a stronger correction is wrong. In fact, if you have a good relationship with them, an LGD is a much more sensitive dog than most other breeds. Part of their guardian duty requires an intuition and sensitivty to their charges, which carries over to their human. My dogs rarely require anything more than a verbal correction, and a mild one at that. Being harsh with an LGD is the best way to make them nasty. I have also worked with lots of rescues and the "aggressive" ones are the ones whose owners were to firm with them

Now,, I DO agree with the part about taking him out for now. At 9 mos old, he's really too young to be alone with them anyway.

Ok....I wasn't clear enough, you are correct. What I was trying to say, without going into a long drawn out post was that ChickenfoodDuckbutt was saying was not correct in that merely a verbal correction is what is going to do the trick. They took all corrections out of the equasion and that is never good advice for anyone. Good advice might have been: try a verbal correction first, instead of going to a shock collar. ChickenfootDuckbutt seems to have a lot of wrong information and my post wasn't complete due to a knee-jerk reaction resulting, also, from the "chase,maul,torture,kill" hunting sequence they seem to have put so much emotion into. As if the dogs are bad to kill, when in fact, it is just the nature of a carnivorous animal.

Verbal corrections work well, in the right circumstances. For a correction to be effective, be it physical or verbal there has to be some training and some kind of relationship there other than owner = food giver. I'm sorry for very poorly explaining what I was trying to say.