Responsible livestock guardian dog breeding

Anyone involved in breeding livestock for profit or purpose will know that to improve your chances of success you need a plan and you need to pay close attention to your breeding program. Type and structure is important and they need to be able to do the job they are designed for. Have a plan and you have a better chance of success.  Why oh why then don't many of these same people understand that this applies to dogs as well?  The same people who are so careful breeding and raising their livestock are happy to go out and buy a livestock guardian dog from anywhere  - a dog often produced with no care or plan in relation to its breeding and raising.  Then they wonder why it doesn't work out or write all livestock guardian dogs off as useless. It simply doesn't make sense to me.  It you are going to invest in an animal to protect your quality and valuable stock, why would you take your chances on a possibly inferior animal?  Investing in a good livestock guardian is like investing in a good ram or bull.  Sure any old scrubber might get results, but they may not be good ones, or the ones you want. You want an dog that can work with you as an important part of your farm team. They are there to protect your investment and livelihood so it can pay to treat them as the valuable asset they are.

Breeding and raising a good livestock guardian dog starts well before the dog is born.  It means carefully choosing the best breeding stock, paying attention to genetics, to health, to structure and to breed type.  Basically it means making sure that you start with a good foundation of healthy, structurally fit animals, with a known pedigree of healthy and structurally fit animals, that have the inbuilt ability to do their job.  To do this you need to choose a breeder that pays attention to these details - who breeds according to a well thought out and researched plan.

But those dogs advertised on your local for sale site were 'bred on the farm' so 'will make good livestock dogs', right?  Wrong. Let me tell you that being bred on a farm doesnt guarantee anything. Just like every ram lamb born on a farm is not going to be your next top stud ram (or even a decent flock ram).  All it means is that it was born on a farm - nothing more.  There is much more to choosing a good dog than the place it was born and while some good dog breeders do own farms, some don't.  Even in their country of origin some of the better breeders of working livestock guardian dogs don't necessarily live on farms.  But they know what traits they should have, they know how to raise them properly and they know how to help choose one that has a good chance of being a good livestock guardian with the right management. And the right management can be just as important too, but that is a whole other topic.

So, where do you go to look for a good breeder? A good place to start is with a breeder who is registered with one of the State member bodies of the Australian National Kennel Council. Just as you have societies and associations for different livestock breeds, this is the one for dogs. A good place to find a list of some registered breeders is the Dogzonline website.  Click on the 'breed pages' link to go to a list of breeds.  The livestock guardian dog breeds currently in Australia include Anatolian Shepherd Dog, Central Asian Shepherd Dog, Komondor, Kuvasz, Maremma Sheepdog, Pyrenean Mastiff, Pyrenean Mountain Dog, Spanish Mastiff and Tibetan Mastiff.  To learn more about these different breeds and livestock guardian dogs in general visit the Livestock Guardian Dogs website. I highly recommend a visit to their 'Library' page.