Near tragedy on the place today...
I was out repairing a broken wire on my electric fence when I looked out on our big frozen pond and saw my youngest (but biggest) Great Pyr with his teeth around one of my duck's neck.
I'm freaking out. Experts say it is important for a Pyr to see you as alpha dog, so I'm yelling in my best Marine Corps platoon sergeant voice (using the appropriate vocabulary thereto) for him to stop. He looks up at me, cocks his head, and goes back to grab the bird's throat again. I start running down the levee, yelling my head off for him to stop and come. He seems to go back and forth trying to decide whether he wants to obey me or rip my duck's head off. Finally he decides on the former and comes to me on the shore.
I don't hit him, but I grab him by the fur on both sides of his face and pull his to mine and yell at him just as loud as I can. Now, this is a very big boy, but he is very much a puppy less than 6 months old, and so he cows. When I feel he has gotten the point, I drag him back to the house and lock him and the rest of the dogs in the garage so I can go retrieve what is left of my duck.
I look out on the pond and the duck is just sitting there, trying to get up. I figure his legs and who knows what else is mangled, so it is up to me to retrieve him and put him out of his misery. I'm not about to walk out on that ice, so I pull my bass boat along the bank, tie a long rope to a tree and to the boat, put a bunch of utensils to either push the boat along or break the ice, depending on what sort of fix I get myself into. Worse comes to worse I figure I could always pull myself and the boat back to the shore with the rope.
So I sled on out into the pond in my boat, inch by inch, until I finally reach to bird some fifty feet out onto the pond. As I go along I keep looking at him to see if I can spot the blood and see where he is injured. He still can't do more than flail his legs. I get there and pick him to inspect him and found...
Nothing. Not a drop of blood, not a broken bone, not a feather out of place.
I took him back to the shore, then up to the house, and put him into one of the my chicken tractors to see if he can stand. He not only stands, but starts waddling all over the place calling for his buds, who soon come to check on him. It was as if nothing had happened.
Then it dawned on me. That dog could have crushed this bird's neck with just a slight bit of pressure, yet he apparently never even hurt it. His teeth are long, yet they didn't even pierce the skin, not even a little bit. I finally figured it all out when I released the unharmed duck back into the yard and he promptly went with his friends back onto the pond and got stuck again. Stupid thing just can't walk on ice and isn't smart enough to know that it can't.
The Pyr was trying to help him! He was trying to help the bird who was obviously in distress to get back to the shore.
In my mind, suddenly this young dog went from the worst dog on the place to quite probably the best. He has bonded with the birds, just as he is supposed to. And being the smart fellow that I have longed suspected him to be (his brother is sweet but a complete idiot), he not only figured out what was distressing the bird, but what the best solution was.
Now, I'm not stupid. I'm still not for certain he wasn't planning to hurt the duck, so I am going to be careful. I'm going to keep the dogs penned in their own quarter acre pasture every day while I'm gone and keep an eye on them when I get home. They still need a lot of watching and a lot of training.
I'm very happy with this guy, but I sure do feel guilty. I sent him exactly the wrong message. Instead of praising him for doing his job, I punished him.
I guess I need training, too.
