- Mar 1, 2009
- 35
- 2
- 22
This is addressed mainly to the people on this board who seem to have some knowledge of how to train/rehab a dog. (Mods: feel free to move it if it would seem to fit better somewhere else.)
It's rather involved and convoluted, so please bear with me.
I moved to northeast OK about 18 months ago, bringing along my ten year old Great Pyranees/Border Collie, Katie. In Montana, she'd been a life saver in keeping coyotes, eagles, hawks, fox, badgers, etc. away from my chickens and heritage turkeys... (Dogs were not a problem because anything running around loose was shot on sight by the first rancher it crossed.) .....until she was home alone one day while I was working in town, and a really nasty thunderstorm rolled in. It had balls of lightning rolling on the ground around my place (according to a neighbor across the valley), and took out everything electronic in the house (computer, phones, TV dish) and the sensor on the yard light.
When I got home, unaware of what had happened since it had not even clouded up where I was 20+ miles away, the screen on the back storm door was in shreds, the audio on my computer was screaming, and Katie was gone; couldn't find her anywhere, and it was two days before she showed up again, muddy and bedraggled. Ever after, if a storm got within 10 miles of the house, she was panting, pacing, and trying to leave. A total basket case.
She has hated OK and its summer heat and humidity...I'm not overly fond of it either... (she has the heavy coat of the GP) not to mention the numerous thunderstorms at all times of the year. She was so paranoid and hard to contain on my fenced 2.5 acres for a while that she lived with my son in Tulsa, where she seemed to be more content in his fenced in .66 acre yard, but then she started knocking his work computer, etc., off the desk, in an effort to find a place to hide from the noise, so I brought her back out to my place near Gore...70 miles away.
Apparently she developed some "abandonment issues" while living with Brian, because if I leave her in the fenced in yard while I go to Muskogee to get feed, she'll dig out and go to a neighbor's place, hiding under his pickup truck or in his garage. Another neighbor, a quarter of a mile up the road, is a gunsmith, maybe specializing in black powder rifles. When he touches one of those things off, the ground shakes, and I really don't blame her for getting rattled. She is almost uncontrollable after a couple of shots from one of those guns. Basically loses her mind.
Last week, he started blasting, and in a matter of seconds, she was gone. When I couldn't find her, but found a place where she'd dug under the yard fence. I got in the pickup and drove up the road, to the highway, noticed some goats clustered and with their heads in the air, looking west. Followed the highway in that direction, and found her trying to get into a farmstead. It had taken her about 10 minutes to vacate my premises and travel over a mile.
It's getting to be a major problem, between the black powder rifles, thunderstorms, and now motorcycles blasting down the highway 1/4 mile to the south. The only way I can keep control of her is with a choke collar....(she's 93 pounds, size of a GP, with the markings of a Border Collie). I don't like tying her with that thing, (and don't, if I can help it) but she pulls out of anything else.....all that neck hair that GP's have. And now, with her anxiety, she's beginning to affect Pest.
Pest is a black, year old female that Brian found as a puppy, trying to scrounge something to eat one Sunday morning in Tulsa while he was on a Diet Coke run to a QT. Skinny, bedraggled, hungry, probably dumped, she ran out into traffic, trying to follow him, so he stopped, bundled her into his car and brought her home. She was small enough that he was carrying her under his arm when he walked in the house. Black, with a narrow white strip on her chest, ears that make her look like the "Flying Nun", she's probably a cross between black lab and maybe doberman. Nobody would claim her when he tried to find an owner, and Animal Control claimed they were full, so she stayed at his house. Her energy knew no bounds, she was completely out of control, and his place was way too small for her shenanigans, so she came home with me to my 2.5 acres where she's been wonderful help.
At first she chose to ignore anything I said to her, but after a session with my corn broom applied liberally to her butt, she soon had a complete grasp of what is expected of her, and is now quite happy to comply.
She'd learned to protect the chickens by watching Katie's reaction to hawks at Brian's place when we all lived there. (I'd gotten majorly bored while trying to find my own place, hatched out some eBay eggs, and housed the chicks in his unused garden shed.) She's a big dog too....83 pounds at last checkup, and fast; has run down at least two squirrels and shook them to death.
But....she's starting to get nervous when Katie has a panic attack....sometimes several times a day when the weather is bad and it's also hunting season....and I don't want her getting to the same state Katie is. She has a bed on the front porch, and at night is the first line of defense when something unwelcome shows up. If she's noisy out in the pasture for very long, I turn Katie out of the house. Between them, they seem to have been able to keep predators at bay.
There is something quite large out and about....one of my 45 pound BBW turkeys was killed and CARRIED....not dragged....almost a block across the pasture before all but it's wings and it's bare breast bone were eaten. Don't know if I even want to know what it was, but a neighbor swears that a couple of years ago a black bear broke into his greenhouse (left tracks for id) and killed all his rabbits. My mail lady also insists there are cougar in the area. Whatever....either one would be bad news.
A couple of nights ago, after a particularly lengthy session with something, Katie, probably in her pursuit of whatever was out and about, dug under the line fence and into a neighbor's pasture where about 20 yearling heifers have been newly deposited. Pest never crosses our boundary fence, but Katie has/will, and is going to get shot if she keeps doing that. And, I don't find any fault with that....that's just the way it is in the country. But I don't want her to leave this earth that way. I will do it myself first.
When I was just a kid of ten or so, my pet English Shepherd, Rowdy, got hit by a car he was chasing on the road past our place in MN, badly injured, and Dad shot him. Then he made me bury him. I've pretty much stayed away from dogs since then. Katie is the first I've owned in the years between....I'm now 72.
I know a whole lot more about correcting horses than dogs. If a horse is scared of something, you just keep on ...at various distances, and at various intensities ...... until they accept whatever they're afraid of. But, I don't know if that works with dogs, or if it just makes them worse.
I have...a .22 rifle, a .22 mag saddle carbine, a 30-30 carbine, and a .357 pistol, and know how to shoot all of them. Would there be any benefit to setting up a target, chaining Katie in the area, and over time....probably lots of it....working my way up the chain of guns, starting with .22 shorts? Would/could .... this make her more accepting of gunfire/thunder, or would just it be...as they say in Montana..."spitting into the wind"?
The other options....as far as I can tell are....
#1: putting her down, or
#2: moving back to Montana where there are only thunderstorms to worry about in the spring and/or fall, and an occasional rifle shot during deer and antelope season.
Any and all suggestions would surely be welcomed at this time.
Thanks. et
It's rather involved and convoluted, so please bear with me.
I moved to northeast OK about 18 months ago, bringing along my ten year old Great Pyranees/Border Collie, Katie. In Montana, she'd been a life saver in keeping coyotes, eagles, hawks, fox, badgers, etc. away from my chickens and heritage turkeys... (Dogs were not a problem because anything running around loose was shot on sight by the first rancher it crossed.) .....until she was home alone one day while I was working in town, and a really nasty thunderstorm rolled in. It had balls of lightning rolling on the ground around my place (according to a neighbor across the valley), and took out everything electronic in the house (computer, phones, TV dish) and the sensor on the yard light.
When I got home, unaware of what had happened since it had not even clouded up where I was 20+ miles away, the screen on the back storm door was in shreds, the audio on my computer was screaming, and Katie was gone; couldn't find her anywhere, and it was two days before she showed up again, muddy and bedraggled. Ever after, if a storm got within 10 miles of the house, she was panting, pacing, and trying to leave. A total basket case.
She has hated OK and its summer heat and humidity...I'm not overly fond of it either... (she has the heavy coat of the GP) not to mention the numerous thunderstorms at all times of the year. She was so paranoid and hard to contain on my fenced 2.5 acres for a while that she lived with my son in Tulsa, where she seemed to be more content in his fenced in .66 acre yard, but then she started knocking his work computer, etc., off the desk, in an effort to find a place to hide from the noise, so I brought her back out to my place near Gore...70 miles away.
Apparently she developed some "abandonment issues" while living with Brian, because if I leave her in the fenced in yard while I go to Muskogee to get feed, she'll dig out and go to a neighbor's place, hiding under his pickup truck or in his garage. Another neighbor, a quarter of a mile up the road, is a gunsmith, maybe specializing in black powder rifles. When he touches one of those things off, the ground shakes, and I really don't blame her for getting rattled. She is almost uncontrollable after a couple of shots from one of those guns. Basically loses her mind.
Last week, he started blasting, and in a matter of seconds, she was gone. When I couldn't find her, but found a place where she'd dug under the yard fence. I got in the pickup and drove up the road, to the highway, noticed some goats clustered and with their heads in the air, looking west. Followed the highway in that direction, and found her trying to get into a farmstead. It had taken her about 10 minutes to vacate my premises and travel over a mile.
It's getting to be a major problem, between the black powder rifles, thunderstorms, and now motorcycles blasting down the highway 1/4 mile to the south. The only way I can keep control of her is with a choke collar....(she's 93 pounds, size of a GP, with the markings of a Border Collie). I don't like tying her with that thing, (and don't, if I can help it) but she pulls out of anything else.....all that neck hair that GP's have. And now, with her anxiety, she's beginning to affect Pest.
Pest is a black, year old female that Brian found as a puppy, trying to scrounge something to eat one Sunday morning in Tulsa while he was on a Diet Coke run to a QT. Skinny, bedraggled, hungry, probably dumped, she ran out into traffic, trying to follow him, so he stopped, bundled her into his car and brought her home. She was small enough that he was carrying her under his arm when he walked in the house. Black, with a narrow white strip on her chest, ears that make her look like the "Flying Nun", she's probably a cross between black lab and maybe doberman. Nobody would claim her when he tried to find an owner, and Animal Control claimed they were full, so she stayed at his house. Her energy knew no bounds, she was completely out of control, and his place was way too small for her shenanigans, so she came home with me to my 2.5 acres where she's been wonderful help.
At first she chose to ignore anything I said to her, but after a session with my corn broom applied liberally to her butt, she soon had a complete grasp of what is expected of her, and is now quite happy to comply.
She'd learned to protect the chickens by watching Katie's reaction to hawks at Brian's place when we all lived there. (I'd gotten majorly bored while trying to find my own place, hatched out some eBay eggs, and housed the chicks in his unused garden shed.) She's a big dog too....83 pounds at last checkup, and fast; has run down at least two squirrels and shook them to death.
But....she's starting to get nervous when Katie has a panic attack....sometimes several times a day when the weather is bad and it's also hunting season....and I don't want her getting to the same state Katie is. She has a bed on the front porch, and at night is the first line of defense when something unwelcome shows up. If she's noisy out in the pasture for very long, I turn Katie out of the house. Between them, they seem to have been able to keep predators at bay.
There is something quite large out and about....one of my 45 pound BBW turkeys was killed and CARRIED....not dragged....almost a block across the pasture before all but it's wings and it's bare breast bone were eaten. Don't know if I even want to know what it was, but a neighbor swears that a couple of years ago a black bear broke into his greenhouse (left tracks for id) and killed all his rabbits. My mail lady also insists there are cougar in the area. Whatever....either one would be bad news.
A couple of nights ago, after a particularly lengthy session with something, Katie, probably in her pursuit of whatever was out and about, dug under the line fence and into a neighbor's pasture where about 20 yearling heifers have been newly deposited. Pest never crosses our boundary fence, but Katie has/will, and is going to get shot if she keeps doing that. And, I don't find any fault with that....that's just the way it is in the country. But I don't want her to leave this earth that way. I will do it myself first.
When I was just a kid of ten or so, my pet English Shepherd, Rowdy, got hit by a car he was chasing on the road past our place in MN, badly injured, and Dad shot him. Then he made me bury him. I've pretty much stayed away from dogs since then. Katie is the first I've owned in the years between....I'm now 72.
I know a whole lot more about correcting horses than dogs. If a horse is scared of something, you just keep on ...at various distances, and at various intensities ...... until they accept whatever they're afraid of. But, I don't know if that works with dogs, or if it just makes them worse.
I have...a .22 rifle, a .22 mag saddle carbine, a 30-30 carbine, and a .357 pistol, and know how to shoot all of them. Would there be any benefit to setting up a target, chaining Katie in the area, and over time....probably lots of it....working my way up the chain of guns, starting with .22 shorts? Would/could .... this make her more accepting of gunfire/thunder, or would just it be...as they say in Montana..."spitting into the wind"?
The other options....as far as I can tell are....
#1: putting her down, or
#2: moving back to Montana where there are only thunderstorms to worry about in the spring and/or fall, and an occasional rifle shot during deer and antelope season.
Any and all suggestions would surely be welcomed at this time.
Thanks. et
