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Would it work to keep the dog in? Maybe...some folks have great luck. Personally, I once had a rott/GSD mix who would stand right in the invisible fence line and twitch...twitch...twitch...wagging her tail as long as you'd stand beside her. I'm not a big fan of those fences..
The bigger problem, however, is that the only thing wearing the collar is your dog. If someone comes walking through your yard one day, for whatever reason, and startles your LGD while inside the perimeter of the invisible fence.....they might be toast.
I wouldn't want to find myself on the witness stand trying to explain why I thought it would be OK to keep a 150lb man-eater behind a fence that those poor Jehovah's Jevitnesses couldn't possibly have known even existed...ya know?
I feel more confident knowing that someone would sorta have to make a concerted effort to get themselves mauled around here...
It also helps that the keeping of LGDs is becoming more and more commonplace for the scores of goat owners in this area.. Moreover, Kentucky state law specifically recognizes farming activities as inherently dangerous and sets forth that if someone gets hurt in the course of a farming activity...too bad...the farmer can't be held liable. It's almost like a "Well, you shoulda thought of that before you went out and [whatever]" type of law.
I wouldn't necessarily want to be the first to test that law against the dog-bite laws, mind you, but I truly don't see it being any different than trespassing and getting horse-kicked...which is definitely a "Too bad -- you shoulda thought of that" situation under state law.
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Ivan's a goof when he's not upset, and when he is upset, he ignores you until he decides things are OK again.
As for kids, basically if it doesn't make him nervous, it won't trigger aggression. If it does make him nervous, he'll start with warnings and escalate from there until the threat goes away.
One of our goats challenged him on DAY ONE and he snapped at her face about 50 times before things went any further.. The last time he snapped at her, she jerked her head just out of the way and immediately circled to butt him in the side. He knew what that was, so he lunged and grabbed her by the ear (boer -- long ears). She rared up, jerked her ear out of his mouth, and ran away..
We went over to see how bad the damage was -- none. Wet with dog slobber, but not a drop of blood. To have seen it happen, you really would have thought it would be split wide open but there wasn't a single scratch on her.
The folks we got him from said his daddy got into a full-on brawl with a mature Boer buck once, after the buck gored the dog in the side HARD.. The dog jumped on the buck's back, grabbed it by the neck, and the buck ran off down a hill -- dog still aboard -- completely out of sight.. Just a few seconds later, they came back up the hill seperately and everything was settled.. They checked the buck, and he was just slobbery...no broken skin.
It takes a lot to make a Sarpie mad enough to kill you -- but they can, and they will if pushed far enough.
If only for the fact that it's possible, supervision around kids is certainly in order.
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Ivan's a working pet. He sleeps in the rain, unless it's an absolute downpour. He frosts over at night in the winter. When it's about 5 degrees outside and we're all about to freeze to death, he's bouncing off the walls like "THIS IS GREAT!!!"
I suspect he'd be fine inside, too -- and we're bigtime inside dog people -- but I honestly believe he's happier outside. A 72* house would be a bit much for a downy undercoat.
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Ivan would definitely be a "basement dog."
Had he been socialized as a youngster, perhaps not...but then again, if he's social, he's not going to guard as well against two-legged critters.
The folks who bred him put theirs Sarplaninacs in a fully enclosed steel stock trailer if they're expecting company. They didn't like theirs to be social.. We walked by the trailer and I swear it sounded like they were tearing it apart trying to get at us... I was impressed by the display, but I'll admit that my heartrate quickened a bit.. I gave my wife this look like "You sure that's what you want?"
She looked back at me smiling, pointed to the rocking, shaking, rumbling trailer and said "That's what
we need."
Like I said, Ivan isn't very social with people. Loves us, but is wary and therefore agressive toward everyone else. Owning a dog like that is a fine line to walk, and one that's not for the faint of heart.
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That's always the best thing to do..
He's not what I'd call domineering, btw.. Fear aggressive dogs are actually big 'fraidy cats; they just have a really peculiar way of showing it.
