We're going to try the trainer before making any decisions...I'm having hopes. All the other dogs have done really well with impulse control training, she's just a little more "terrier" than the others. Things that work with a mastiff, like dominance training, do not work with her at all. She's very positive motivated.
DH will probably do a solar electric fence. I probably wouldn't have had a problem with the chickens if the chicks didn't manage to squeeze out the one hole...well, other than the one she grabbed.
The run is box wire, chicken wire, and snow fence along two sides, where it's sunniest, and is facing our northerly direction. We have a very hilly large farm behind us, and wind just picks up steam and blows hard across the back.
Because of the direction we ran the fencing, very few of the openings are bigger than an inch. She had just broken off a piece and pushed it around. I'll have have to just look at the fence everyday if we keep her. She does the same thing with our regular fence...stretches it out or chews it apart.
We have fox, raccoons, groundhogs, skunks, I'm sure there are others out there I just haven't seen...nothing has gotten in the pen, so I'm confident of the predator proof aspect. The wire is buried under the ground as well. Three barking dogs are probably a big deterrent as well.
She's a really good "house" dog, so it does break my heart a little to think of re-homing her. BUT, that being said...I have muscular dystrophy. And while I most of the time feel ok enough to, in addition to their normal outs, play with them each day. I couldn't walk her a few times a day, and I couldn't go out every day without fail, especially in the winter. I've been in the hospital for having to chase her around when she ran away once, and seeing as I'm already there a few times a year without the dogs help, I do have to think of myself.
I don't really want to, though!
I had forgotten, I was once feeding baby rabbits when the girls killed their mother (successfully! Which is apparently rare) and one of them had gotten out and was bounding around the kitchen and Cookie killed her too. She's got quite the death toll for a little dog.
We've tried retriever training for duck hunting and she didn't respond well. However, I'm certainly no dog hunting training expert and I very possibly didn't do a good job in that aspect.
I can see how a dog like Cookie, while absolutely adorable, can make you feel at your wits end! If she is a danger to your animals AND your neighbor's animals, I think re-homing her would be best. She clearly has the prey-drive that this breed was meant to have. She's still young, perhaps a hunter would LOVE her to join his crew!
