I named the mama dog, "Maggie." I named the puppy, "Sue." Maggie is also considerate of the chickens. She will not run through them but goes around them. I actually was looking out the window & saw her catch the opossum. She seemingly had left the tree and waited for the opossum to come down. Maggie came streaking across the yard out of nowhere, very fast, past chickens, geese & grabbed the opossum and shook it hard. The hens scattered across the place did not even look up. At that moment, it seemed remarkably odd to me that she could be so completely ferocious with the opossum right in the midst of the fowl all about her.
Maggie was in the city, literally, traffic, people & was negotiating a difficult life. I had seen her the previous year or so around (and she was not approachable). After she had her puppies, she was stuck in a place and could not run, She would chase people & dogs from the vicinity of the yard of the abandoned house where she had her puppies. The postal worker had phoned the city and reported they would not go back on that block until she was taken off the street. The City had received several other calls from people in the area about her. The City animal control officer had come out and darted Maggie twice but before passing out, she would quickly run far up under her abandoned house (and the puppies would move to her) and the officer could not and would not crawl to that far a reach underneath the house (it was belly crawl room only & a squeeze).
I had started taking her puppy chow & fresh water when I noticed she was searching for food everywhere in the neighborhood. My first visit, after I found where she was hiding her puppies, she came close to eating me up limb from limb. Once the first dish of food was left, that first day, she accepted the next few days with only growls which grew to her coming up and nudging me (and that was when I petted her). In the mean time, all this was happening with the City/ Animal Control & against the backdrop that I was getting ready to move from the City to the far-out country with acreage. Having failed to dart her twice, the City came out to shoot her dead. By this time, I was a week from moving, and she was letting me play and pick up the puppies. When they came out, I had just reached the point where Maggie would seemingly do as I asked. With rifle in the officer's hand, I begged him not to shoot her, that I would get her to go into a pen & keep her up until I got moved away. He watched as I got her to go into a dog pen my next door neighbor kindly allowed me to utilize until I moved. The ~5 wk old puppies were scared and ran under the house. I had to belly crawl under the house and get all 8 of them, one-by-one because I had to have a free arm to use on the ground to pull through the tight places. I got all of them out & penned them all for about a week. I found that Maggie would walk on a leash with no trouble. She got into my car with no fear. After we had moved the major part of our household to the new place in the country (after the first two truck loads), I moved Maggie & the puppies. The week I had them penned, I had taken the puppies to the vet and got them their shots, de-worming and all. Maggie just ran around and acted like she loved the new place and had that look like, "yes, this is my home." Soon thereafter, I adopted out the puppies. A good buddy had kept my chickens for me while we fixed our home up in the city to sell and during the showing so the chickens came after I got the first coop built and then the geese soon thereafter. When the chickens came, they were in cages and Maggie ran at them like she wanted to get them and I simply went over to her and said loudly, "NO!" She never bothered them again. I kept them in a run to confine them a few weeks and when I saw that Maggie acted like she was looking out for them and go after other animals, I began letting them free range. I have since hatched some Guineas and they are still little (4-5 weeks old but running loose with chicken hens who hatched them.
My pasture backs up to a National Forest and there is nothing but forest/deep woods behind me for miles. I have seen fox, coyotes,raccoons, turkeys, deer, rattlesnake (TimberRattler as big around as a rabbit, which I had to dispatch). I've heard Screech Owls, Great Horned Owls and seen & heard plenty of hawks (Red-Tailed, Red-Shouldered & Cooper's) -- The chickens go in their coop, the geese stay out but sleep in the open barn where Maggie usually sleeps. I hear Maggie barking through the night and she has the deep, loud bark of a bigger dog (Maggie is only 55 lbs). I've also seen her chase other dogs who wander on the edges of the property (and she attacked a neighbor's dog). Whether or not someone thinks it is improper for me to call her a LGD, she is serving the function but is probably more what I had in mind because she keeps the other kind of predator away from my home as well: human strangers. She has not bitten a human, but she certainly acts like she would. The Real Estate agent who sold this place to us wanted to come pick up her "For Sale" sign but she said, she'd heard we had a dog that will definitely bite. We took her the sign to her office.
probably more than any of you wanted to know & didn't mean to bore you. All this has happened since April, 2010. My guess is Sue was born sometime the first week of April.