How to get guard dog puppy used to my animals?

[flickerfarkle]

This might should have been posted in the general discussion forum, but here goes.

I'm raising quail and rabbits in an urban back yard. They're all caged but come next spring I'm going to set up grow-out tractors for both, which will increase their exposure somewhat.

I get nighttime visits from deer, coyotes, foxes, skunks, armadillos, and groundhogs; just about every wild critter in this region except raccoons. And I've captured my neighbor's house cats trying to break in to my brooding boxes on game cameras.

So I'm getting a "farm shepherd," a strain of dog bred to be a combination livestock guard dog and herding dog. He'll be about 8 weeks old when I get him and the breeder tells me I should expose him to my animals and encourage him to be "interested but not excited" by them.

So if any of you have experience with this, can you please explain to me how I can cultivate "interested but not excited"?

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Since all your critters are safely caged I would expect that letting him have the run of the yard would do it. I would not try to "introduce" him to your critters in any way. Just let them be "furniture," if you ignore them I'd expect he would, too. He will sniff and investigate. Let him. Act neutral toward them. Over time he will too. That's what I would do, and have done, in introducing my dogs to the chickens. Now the dog eats grain and worms with the chickens and pays them no mind whatsoever.