Can I bring my livestock guardian dog in the house? Will it “ruin” his instinct to guard?
The short answer is that yes, you can bring your LGD inside, and no, it won’t ruin his ability to mature into a successful livestock guardian.
The long answer, and the reason why you might consider it, is a little bit more complex.
Depending on your experience with dogs on a farm, you might find yourself surprised to hear that many farmers won’t leave a dog with unsupervised access to some types of stock until anywhere from 1-2 years old. That sounds like a long time to wait, when you’re dealing with a predator load - but if you’ve ever seen a dog in their “teenage” months around a group of flighty chickens, you probably know exactly why.
Dogs younger than 18 months - 2 years old are immature - babies or adolescents, especially when they’re from a larger breed like a Great Pyrenees, Anatolian Shepherd, or other LGD breed, who mature a bit slower than average.
Many of us have been through a puppyhood and adolescent period with one of our dogs. The adolescent period can be challenging - I often recommend that pet dog clients enroll in a similar-aged positive reinforcement group training class during the adolescent period, just to have the support of other owners dealing with the same thing. You might consider joining the Facebook group I will link at the bottom of this post, to look for a similar kind of shared-experience support with your adolescent LGD!
In addition to support, it can be really beneficial to have a plan, so you are less likely to get overwhelmed. I’ll talk about some facets I consider in any dog training plan below.
With any dog, but especially with ones doing important work like LGDs, it's helpful to set up management (preventing mistakes/avoiding behaviors you don't want from being practiced & becoming habits), socialization (positive experiences during appropriate developmental periods), and training (teaching them what behaviors you do want) to set ourselves up to succeed.
So, why would you want to bring your livestock guardian puppy into the house?
Ostensibly, you got an LGD puppy in hopes that one day, they would live outdoors with your livestock full-time, protect them from your local predator load, and be a generally well-behaved member of the farm. If you’ve never brought an LGD puppy inside before, you might be surprised to hear that it can help - but it can!
Bringing LGD pups in the house helps to socialize them to household experiences, so that they are able to handle those experiences well when older.
Sometimes you'll need to bring your LGD indoors if a dog is in season, a dog is injured, or there is an emergency or evacuation. Making sure that your dogs have positive experiences with this (and anything else you can possibly think of being helpful when they're older) while young will make your life loads easier later.
Bringing LGD pups in the house also helps with training.
The more time the dogs spend close to you, the more opportunities you have to reward behaviors you want to repeat, and to redirect ones you don't. The more history your dogs have of knowing to look to you for guidance, and that good things come for you, the more they will look to you in other situations. The more times they are rewarded for behaviors that you like, the stronger their belief that those behaviors are the best behaviors to do becomes.
“The dog is a dog, twenty-four hours a day. His world is shaped by what you say and do, not just in training sessions but in every waking moment he is with you.”
Bringing LGD pups in the house especially helps with management!
You don't want a livestock guardian pup to learn to hyper-fixate, stare, bark, whine, chase, nip, etc. the stock, while unsupervised. Some of those behaviors, they can practice even while in a separate pen nearby, even without physical access to the stock. We all want a livestock guardian who spends their time with the stock behaving appropriately, not a chicken-chaser.
When you start with pups in the house, going out to see the stock initially on leash, with you supervising and specifically teaching them which behaviors you want, the pups are set up to not make unsupervised mistakes, and to make fewer mistakes overall.
“Practice makes habit.”
I am fond of saying “practice makes habit” - prevent the dog from practicing unwanted behaviors, and set them up to practice wanted behaviors (and to be rewarded for those wanted behaviors) and you'll have a much more solid behavioral foundation, and be less likely to see them regress to behaviors you don't want to see. It's all about setting them, and you, up for success, so you can build strong foundations for their future work.
Of course, if you’ve ever raised an LGD outside, and been so lucky as to get a gem of a dog who never thought to chase chickens to begin with, you know it’s possible to have a great LGD who never set foot indoors. That being said, when it’s possible, bringing your LGD puppy indoors, even part-time, helps with a lot of foundations for behaviors we sometimes struggle with in adult LGDs. A dog who is comfortable in many situations, is a dog who can handle those situations when we ask them to.
If you’d like more info, or to talk with some fellow farmers who are very experienced in raising well-behaved LGDs, check out the Facebook group Training Support for Livestock Guardian Dogs. The admins noticed a lack of accurate training information specialized to LGDs and their unique training needs, and have put together some very detailed information in their “guides” (linked at the top of the Facebook group, after you join).
Cade, with Argot Animal Training LLC