When we lost our house to the tornado we stayed with family and the only things I could bring were the dogs. I safely(I thought) penned up in steel panels my goats and sheep. We lived in the woods with no neighbors. My chickens ducks and geese were put in a shed with a wire door until I could get arrangements for them. As you can imagine they didn't last very long. Coyotes came in the night a couple nights later and killed everything! Big and little the next morning everything was dead. I cried for days over my animals. Well, later we moved back there in a camper and I got a few more animals including goats, chickens, rabbits, geese and ducks. When my dad got sick and passed we moved into his old place, first to take care of him and then to live. Once again I was forced to leave my animals behind. I brought everything I could with the exeptions of what could not be brought onto his lot(goats, geese) and what I couldn't catch( you know like chickens that roost in trees!) and one of my dogs that I trusted to be loose and not to roam around while I was not there an english bulldog/pittbull cross named Misfit. I hoped that maybe the scent of a dog around might keep the coyotes at bay, but I didn't have much hope for the chickens that were left there. Well I went everyday to check on Misfit and I left an open bag of food where she could get it. A few days turned into about 2 months. Everyday she was there waiting on me when I pulled up, and until the day that I got her not a single animal was harmed by anything. When I got her and the rest of my animals, all were fat and sassy and accounted for plus a couple. Unfortunately there were a couple of mucovies and two bantam roosters and a hen that I couldn't catch and planned on coming back the next day to get. The next day they were no longer there and coyote and raccoon tracks were in the driveway! Baby chicks even hatched unharmed while she was there! We still have her and she is as much a part of the family as the rest of us and when we needed her she did her job when I was going through troubling times with my dad. If all dogs could just be like that!! And everytime I read about people with chicken killing dogs, I want to tell them about my dog who did the work of a human to take care of the farm while I was not there!
