Yay! Always nice to meet a fellow Texan! We are pretty deep in east Texas, almost verging on the Louisiana border close to Shreveport - but my husband and I were up in the metroplex for years. The breeder we got our boerboel from is in Denton County.
I'm thinking after our boerboel is gone that I would love to get a livestock dog - like you say, something trained to guard the animals but that I don't have to always fear will decide to have a tasty chicken nugget snack one afternoon when I'm not looking... He isn't really open to other dogs coming around, but our boerboel is wonderful at keeping predators (and potential intruders) away. We have a reputation in the community for having the biggest, meanest looking dog around, which was my goal.
I think my nustock has finally arrived at the post office. I'm hoping that it lives up to the high praise I've seen others give it here on BYC... My goose's neck is healing - thankfully the flies seem to have been kept at bay (I'm assuming because they do spend their days out on our pond and all the head dunking seems to have kept it fairly well washed). But she's going to have some nasty scars if I can't find something to help her a little...
I keep calling her a "her" but really I have no idea of the sex of this bird... Being this is my first go round with geese, do you really have to wait until they reach sexual maturity to figure this out? It doesn't really matter enough for me to want to try to vent sex them...