Man's Best Friend aka Chief Face Licking Coordinator

I figure it is appropriate to talk about dogs and owning a property. Everyone that I know that has property and some sort of livestock has dogs. There are working dogs, those that manage and protect the flock. They need direction and a purpose but they do not need all the attention. There are also those that are house dogs. These are the ones that take up your couch at night, fight for your attention and if they can they find a way to lay on your chest at night. Ensuring that you remember that you are their person.

There are also those dogs that have special meanings to you and these can be those that are working dogs or house dogs. Some are even loyal service dogs or emotional support dogs. I do not know much about the ones that are licensed but anyone that has had a dog they will know most of the time there are support dogs in some way or another. Each one of ours serve a purpose, they have their roles and even though they may drive us insane at times they are part of the family. Without a doubt they are an animal that truly loves you more then they love themselves. I will take a moment to share a bit about the three we have but before I do that it is important to talk about ranching or farming and having a dog.

A dog can serve a working purpose around here, these are normally Anatolian Shepherds or Pyrenees they are the most common. These dogs are masters at working the herd when needing to move them. They are protectors of the flock from predators. They are even companions to the livestock they protect. I have seen dogs fight off other dogs, coyotes and even birds of prey. They may come back bloody and hurt but at the end of the day their herd will be safe if they can do anything about it. It is quite incredible how loyal these animals can become when they have and understand their purpose.

A dog when it becomes accepted with the livestock there is a level of trust that becomes almost natural. A cattle dog amongst the cattle won't push the cattle until it is time (at least they should not if trained right). A sheep dog guards the flock, eats among the flock and will even sleep in the middle of the flock. A chicken dog if raised right will lay amongst the birds. They will even let the chickens roost on them briefly or in my dogs case will line up and share their feed as if they are one big happy family.

I am not claiming to be an expert on dogs in any way. I do have three and all of them are rescue dogs. Two of them are from abusive pasts. A combination of neglect and being mistreated very harshly. The big black hairy one was abandoned at barely 2 weeks old at a rodeo and is now my buddy. Each of them have come to me under different circumstances. Each of them have taught me different things about dogs and have taught me certain attributes. Patience probably being one of the biggest ones. As I said I may not be an expert but I am pretty confident in how to raise dogs, especially ones that are abused or need a home.

The first thing all dogs need is trust. They need to trust who you are, they will not even consider listening or following any type of command until they trust you. This is not forced, it is earned over time. It is taught by discipline, sometimes repeating the same thing over and over until they know you are going to be in charge but also going to care for them. The second things dogs need is validation. They want it from their person. A dog knows when you are upset at it and it definitely knows when you are happy with it. They wear their emotions out front so everyone can see it. The third is a purpose or their role. It does not matter if it is a sheep dog, a loyal companion or a service dog. They have to have their purpose and they must know it is there.

Take for example a service dog for someone with a disability. They learn to assist their person completely, when they are on the job. They help guide them when needed, protect as necessary and even just simply give love. They know their job or their purpose and they do it. Take that away from them and they are lost and will tend to either be depressed or act out. A livestock dog that has grown up with the flock if you take that away from them they will start to wander, trying to find a new flock or simply be lost and not know what to do with themselves. Take a house pet for example my American Bulldog whose name is Freja has been with me the longest. Going on 7 years, since I have had her we have been through a lot together. She has seen the good and the bad times. She is used to being with me, if I leave her for a day or two she is out of sorts. She does not function very well and when I am home she has to make up for all that lost time with playtime and cuddles.

A dog also has to have its clear training for their role. I do not even bother trying to train my three for true livestock dogs. The reason is they were all abused or neglected the odds of them being able to do something like that is just not realistic. Once a dog has experienced something like that it does truly hinder them. That said, livestock dogs needs to know its commands, its boundaries and what is expected of them. This is not taught simply by tossing them out with the cattle or sheep and hoping for the best. This is done by introducing them slowly with a certain level of restrictions. They are limited in their contact with the animals. They are rewarded when they do what they are shown. Being taught to sit and stay when needed is a must. Patience training for all dogs I think is one of the most important things. Without it they get too excited and overwhelmed.

Funny thing, no dog or any animal for that matter will do something unless the owner takes the time to train and teach them. Shocker I know... There are ton of dog owners I have been around that start immediately yelling at the dog when it does not do something they want. Then they start apologizing for their dogs behavior over and over. When really they should be apologizing for their own lack of discipline. Their lack of doing what a responsible owner should do and train a dog. One of my favorites it "I am sorry she never does that when its just us at home" Well no duh Sherlock of course she doesn't because this situation does not happen when its just you sitting on the couch. Training happens in the moment and sometimes that means when Grandma comes to visit. Instead of screaming at the dog to sit, it might be better to have a leash and introduce the dog slowly if you know it will get to over excited.

Most dogs are very intelligent and people act like training takes way too much time or way too hard. I have found that the best way to train any dog is to do it as you go about life. When you have to do the dishes, make the dog lay in its bed while you do the dishes. Stop when they get up. Lead them back to the bed and have them lay down. Continue until they can lay there until you are done. I can go on with other examples but you get the point.

All three dogs that you see are currently with us they make up a part of our family. I do not mean this in some weird way as oh the dogs are our kids or any of that nonsense. I mean it simply as that they are active in our lives. They are not on the same level as the people in our lives but if they were not to be around anymore there would be a small part missing. Each one has their characteristics that make them unique, frustrating and who they are.

I will start with Freja. The American Bulldog she has been with me the longest and everyone that knows me knows Freja. She is my buddy, has been just about everywhere with me over the passed 6 years. We have gone through some really rough training sessions some great times together. She is without a doubt the best dog I have ever had and the first one that was mine solely. Her story is one that starts a little untraditionally. I was not married at the time and as tired of coming home to an empty house. So my thought was to get a dog. I initially wanted to get a puppy and go through the training process. I enjoy being able to work with the puppy and train them up. Some people do not like the late night wake ups for bathroom breaks or the constant need for attention. I enjoy it, I find it rewarding to work with the puppy and see them progress. That said Freja was not this. My brother knew I was looking for a dog and called me telling me he found the dog. He sent me picture of this rough looking dog, skinny as a bone with cigarette burns all over her. The image was sad and you could see that she had a terrible start. The next picture was this same dog curled up snuggled with my nephew as sweet as can be. For what this dog clearly went through and to be that gentle and cuddly with a baby I was sold. I got the information of how she was found, tied up in a yard with a torn up kennel she had clearly busted out of. She was skinny could see every rib and she had burns all over her.

There was something about this that intrigued me I wanted to help her and see that sweet dog come out full time. I have been through quite a few things myself and in a way I could relate. There is something to be said to go through that type of pain and come out of it better. So I went and picked her up, beginning my journey into rescue dogs. I will take a moment and tell anyone considering getting a rescue dog. Do not do it if you are not prepared for a process, you get everything that comes with that dog. All the trauma and baggage that they carry. It will come out. There will be zero trust and you have to fix that first. All animals or humans that have been betrayed, abused or left behind need this first. The second thing that comes is the clinginess, it is almost to a point of unbearable. They learn to trust and they commit fully. You also become there only point of strength they rely on you for everything. The third and final stage is the building of confidence for the dog. The battle of separation anxiety. This is a tough one and there is absolutely no way of predicting what the pup will do. You just worked through the process of gaining trust and getting them to count on you and now you want them to be able to function somewhat on their own. The best way is to give them a place. It can be a spot on the couch (Freja's spot). A dog bed, (Nova, the red healers spot), or a kennel (Bjorn, the big black hairy beast). This is where they go when they are over stimulated, excited and just need to calm down.

So back to Freja I got her home and for the first month she would not even come near me. Unless I had food or she had to go outside. I actually slept on the floor for the first month with her because she refused to get in bed or even lay near me. Over the course of the month she slowly came closer until eventually she was essentially laying on my pillow or my chest. From there she was attached. Leaving her actually became harder then before. She would cry, bark and try to escape. I came home one day and she had chewed through the door and the frame of the bedroom she was in because I did not trust her to have the whole apartment. I mean she basically ate through the door even had a nail in her lip to show proof. I came home to this and I will be honest I was not mad, I was sad because I cannot imagine the panic she went through and the pain. I cleaned her up and my father helped me fix the damage eventually. We went through this for a little while, thankfully not constant damage or hurting herself but still some until she learned that I was always coming back.

I eventually sent her to training which was an amazing decision, she spent a month basically in doggy boot camp and she came back a completely different dog. She had confidence to lay in bed without freaking out if I was getting ready to leave. I trusted her to bring her everywhere with me, around people, other animals everywhere. She is now my dog through and through. She has helped me through tough times. Sometimes she just seems to know when I need some extra snuggles or just to have her laying there. She plants herself right where she needs to be and good luck trying to move her when she has made up her mind to be by my side. She has times where she is the goofiest and most playful dog you will ever meet. Other times she can be the laziest dog I have ever met.

I have watched her eat a rose off the flower for no reason and just run off like she did something amazing. Seen her come up from our lake with a bullfrog in her mouth and all you saw was the legs until she slurped it down. She has taken a copper head strike for me when I did not know it was there. Freja has been the first dog that was truly mine and I could go on to tell a ton of stories. The struggles that we have gone through. There has been a ton but I would do them again because her start to life, nothing deserves that. She has earned her spot on the couch next to me, my beautiful wife and my wonderful daughter.

The second picture is of Nova or the little fat dog as my wife affectionately calls her. She is a tough one. She came to me from an abusive situation as well. I do not know the extent of it but it was bad. If you moved your hand at all she would flatten herself to the ground, cry and piddle. A dog only does this if they have been severely beaten. I will tell you this I do not ever hit my dogs. It does not happen because it does no good. You either scare them so bad that they cannot function or they do what any animal will do they defend themselves. Frankly that is what should happen. She could not handle small spaces so a kennel was out of the options. Also, when feeding her it was a frenzy. She would panic and eat so fast she would make herself throw up. So my guess you had a severely beaten dog, that was barely fed and most likely shoved into a tiny kennel because the previous people did not want to deal with the dog.

One of the best things I had going for me was Freja, American Bulldogs are known as nanny dogs and she took Nova under her almost immediately which did help with the training process. It got her to calm down relatively quick in some ways. I still have to feed her separate from other dogs or she eats in such a panic but now I can get her to sit calmly outside waiting for me to bring her the food. She does not try to jump and knock it out of my hand. She even lets me pet her while eating. This happened because I would bring the food down to her and she would get pets before I gave her the food. I would continue petting her while she ate. This helped tremendously. She is a red healer so she wants to help with our animals so badly. The problem is the abuse that she experienced early in her life ruined her for this. She wants to please so bad that if you correct her she just lays down and flips on her back. So we do not try to train her in this way. If she does herd the chickens or move the horses and does it correctly we tell her good girl, reward her with belly rubs and we take what we get. If she gets to worked up she has to go lay down in her spot (away from the livestock) and wait until we are done.

Which leads me to teaching her, her spot in the house this was immensely difficult. When dogs are in the house, we like them to have their spot and relax. They do not get to roam or wander. It is also only play time if we initiate it. It keeps control and it is a must when you sometimes have 4 dogs in the house at once. They also do not get to crowd and all try to cuddle unless invited (this is still being worked on). For Nova when she realized I was not going to yell or beat the crap out of her and she would get some snuggle time she took this to the extreme. Every time I sat down she would come running to jump into my lap and her idea of cuddling is to jam her head directly into your forehead and keep pressing like she is going to somehow create a new level of snuggling that no dog has ever done. To combat that we started to only allow cuddling when invited and other then that she had to go lay in her bed. I am not kidding this meant that she would go to her bed, get up in 5 minutes without permission and then I would walk her back to her bed and have her lay down. Repeat and repeat over and over and over again. This was basically my evenings for weeks until she got the idea. Of course this only works if you give her some time that is just her. Let her come sit on your lap and keep the other dogs away. She is light years better then what she was when she came to me but is still a work in progress. It has taken almost two years to get relearn and move past the abuse she experienced in the first few months of her life.

The last one is Bjorn or Baby Bjorn as I call him. You call him Bjorn he gets all excited but if I call him Baby Bjorn his butt shakes uncontrollably and he is ready for all the pets he can get. Now I have no clue what breed he is. He has characteristics of a pyrenees, he swims like a Newfoundland but has the nose of a black lab as he loves to bring me rotting carcasses as if they are the coolest thing he has ever seen. He is my buddy and rightly so I found him at the rodeo when he was a few weeks old. He was tiny and should not have been away from his momma yet. I brought him home and he was so small I lost him in my cowboy boot once. I was looking everywhere for him until he came rolling out of the boot where he had clearly been sleeping for awhile. He slept on my right shoulder for the first couple months because I slept downstairs in the recliner I have because he was too little to sleep on his own. During the day he became the adopted pup of Freja. She cared for him, laid with him and nudged him along when he was wandering. She even potty trained him for the most part. She would go outside and he would follow and copy her.

He is now a big hairy mess and if I invite him loves to put his big paws on my chest and give me a hug. He is rarely not with me. If I am out on the property he comes with, if I am inside he lays at my feet and if I would let him would love to lay on my lap. This is very rarely allowed because he is a walking carpet and whatever we were doing outside usually comes in. He is a dog that I would challenge is one of the happiest dogs ever to be on this earth. That said he has stepped up when needed. We had a mink that was killing our guinea hens and for the life of us we could not trap it or kill it. Well Bjorn solved that he found the home and went after this thing like it was a demon. He tore into its little home snarling and growling tearing earth away trying to get at this thing. He did not stop until I watched this thing take off somehow getting away faster then I thought it could move. We never saw the mink again.

The other was when our neighbors Anatolian Shepherd decided to attack him on our property, the Anatolian came onto our property and got ahold of him. I was standing not more then a foot away and I watched my Baby Bjorn lose his mind. He flipped the Anatolian rather easily and before any fight could really occur Bjorn had him on the ground and got a few good bites in before the Anatolian wiggled away running back to his side of the property. Again, we have not seen the Anatolian since and probably won't again for quite some time or ever again. Bjorn is the happiest and goofiest dog you will ever meet. He loves kids and anyone that comes to visit is there to see him. You would never guess that he had a mean bone in his body. Which he does not but if you threaten him he will turn quite quickly and he defends his flock or his people as he should.

He was without the easiest to train. The only funny training story I have is for a period of several months I was convinced he was deaf. He was listening great as a puppy and then all of a sudden when I would call him, tell him to lay down anything he would not even acknowledge me. I mean he would not even act like he heard anything. He was oblivious and he kept this up for awhile. I was convinced, I really figured he could not hear. Before I married my wife I was telling her about this and she laughed telling me he was just ignoring me. I was skeptical but it turned out he was just ignoring me and realized if he did I was not coming after him to ensure he listened. This ended quite quickly and I still have a chuckle when he ignores me which is rare that he almost had me fooled.

I could go on about my dogs and share other stories which I may at some point but I think for this one it is time to wrap up as I do not know how many of you are still reading at this point. (Hopefully it is quite a few of you).

The last few things I will mention is all dogs need training. An unruly dog or a dog that does not do what it is supposed too is normally a product of a lazy, uncaring or a dog owner that has no clue what they are doing. You cannot get mad at a livestock dog for not guarding the flock unless you train it. Treat it accordingly and reward it when it does the right thing. This takes time to do and it is worth the time. A house dog is no different if you want it to do something work with it. Have patience and realize that dogs do not learn things immediately it take a few repetitions. I mean come on even humans cannot do something the first time. We have to practice, be shown and learn it is no different then a dog.

If you venture to take on a rescue dog, no matter the situation or how severe. Remember you get everything that comes with. You get everything that the previous owner did. The trauma comes with and it takes time to work through. Each dog has a personality and it is your job to get it to come out correctly. Just like us when you go through terrible situations it changes you. You get hurt enough you won't trust anyone and it takes time to heal. Animals are the same. It is a process and it does not happen right away. There will be set backs and if you are not prepared for it do not take on a rescue.

It goes without saying all dogs take time to train. They bring in their own challenges. Do not expect them to just do what you want without you teaching them. If you plan on getting a dog plan on taking the time to be with the dog. Do not take a dog and drop it on family or friends while you go live your life. Get a dog when you plan on being home, when you can care for it. Do not put that on others and pretend that it is still your dog. Also if you have dogs that you want to do something specific as guard the house or the flock I will put it plainly. Get off your butt and show them what to do. Put down your phone, video games or whatever you are wasting your time doing that essentially means nothing and take care of your responsibilities. That is exactly what a dog is if under your care. It is your responsibility and if it does not do what you want it to do or if it is unruly it is actually a direct reflection of you as the owner.

A dog can be your best friend, a joy in your life if you take the time with it. No matter if it is a family dog, a livestock dog or whatever the intention is. You may be surprised the dogs may just help you in return. I know each of mine have. They have helped me get through tough times, taught me patience, how to persevere and to ultimately care for something other then myself. For a long time they were one of the few areas in my life that brought a smile to my face because there is nothing better then your dogs, wiggling with happiness when you get home, over joyed with the fact that you are back with them just waiting to give you all of their love and affection.