Awwww! Love the bully with the chicks, what a cute pic.
As an owner of six dogs, a person who has now fostered 330 dogs destined to or from humane societies and a chicken owner who works for a vet, here is my two cents:
No dog could really be trusted, but as you see in here with the photos of the pitties and golden you saw that were quite relaxed, with some dogs you can get to the point where you really don't have to worry much. Breeds specifically designed and bred to guard or herd might be the ones with the best initial tendencies, and you would want to avoid high prey drive dogs (although pitties tend to be high prey and obviously there are hundreds of great ones out there). It just depends on the dog and how much work you want to put in.
Good fences work great. Dog area/chicken area. We introduce the dogs to the chickens after they have been behind the fence a long time and are boring.
Train your dogs a word for "drop it" or "out" or "release" before they meet the bird. Coming when they are called. That really helped us that our personal dogs knew OUT from playing retrieve.
I once had a golden retriever that I had trained to do tricks with my pet parakeet and my dog was always 100 percent perfect. Until one day when I was gone and the bird escaped from the cage and the dog ate it! I always remember that when dealing with dogs (predator) with anything that is prey (bird). They are only as smart as the highest "leader" in the room. If you are not there and it is just bird and them, the dog is the leader and makes a dog style choice. Some dogs might not, but good barriers make for fewer accidents.
Of the dogs we have and have known with the chickens, the best one we have is a border collie, probably mixed with a little aussie. As far as our fosters go, the basset and the great dane were both perfectly fine, doxie good. Rottie mix not so much. Lab was a definite long training project. Vizila pup we had here would have been a piece of cake. Also a shihtsu we had paid them absolutely no attention whatsoever. We haven't had beagles, but the quality that works with them is that they are just more interested in something else. Our rhodesian ridgeback and our boxer/pit mix I would never trust, but we have a ridgeback/pit mix that is very good, so it isn't always about the breed. The ridgeback/pit really cares about nothing except my husband and thinks about nothing but him, birds are not interesting, she only cares about his constant approval. Our Karelian bear dog mix guards the coop and enclosure but I would not trust her with any loose. She is making sure that if anyone gets to eat them, it is her, I think.
So again, it is really about the individual dog. But in the meantime, this is really a predation issue and you need to protect your birds with a fence.
