I’m looking for excellent Garden Dog, that can scare away (Or kill) all the Animals (Deer, Rabbits, Squirrels, Groundhogs, Moles, Mice, ect) bothering my Garden but at the same time not trample over my garden beds & make a mess digging holes ever where, respecting boundaries & one that doesn’t attack me or my family. I plan to feed my garden dog the best food from my garden & chicken eggs (And the other pest animals my dog feels like hunting).
As a bonus, perhaps a guard dog to protect the home & garden not just from animals but Human invaders too.
I’m hoping a good garden dog can supplement a fence or perhaps make having a fence/border wall not required to keep deer/groundhogs out.
I’ve got a lot of questions to help me find/create the right dog for the job.
Does an excellent Garden Dog Breed exist already or do we have to Breed one ourselves?
Or is the dog breed irrelevant if it can be trained to respect garden boundaries?
Which is better, Dog Breed vs Dog Landrace? Does it make sense to landrace a dog? I’ve heard some dog breed are so inbred that they constantly get disease, live horrible lives full of pain & sometimes an eyeball can pop out, yikes!
Is there enough diversity in dogs breeds to avoid this horrible inbred genetic fate or will I have to source diversity genetics from Wolves (Or other species)? Ideally I’m hoping there’s enough diversity in dogs to not resort to introgression with wolves, I like the friendly trait dogs have.
What do you do about the “offtypes”? If your crossing so many dog breeds, what happens if the Aggressive trait shows up that could threaten you or your children? Nurture vs Nature or is it both? How much can you out train bad aggressive dog genetics?
Cesar millian said dogs feel your energy & confidence, he makes it look easy with enough patience & teaching respect. But wolves or Wolfdogs are a very different story no? Same things don’t apply right? Eventually the reality of genetics rear their ugly heads into the situation no?
I mean any “off type” I could donate to friends or animal shelters but if the dog is dangerous, it feels irresponsible to pass that on to another person but at the same time it feels wrong to put down a dog, even if aggressive especially if it the behavior of the “Off type” can be fixed with training. But then I’ve heard horror stories of Rottwilers attack their own family with no earlier sings of aggression. You can’t out train a bad breed no?
Any ideas, thoughts or suggestions? Any gardener/farmer who also has a dog, how do you make it work?
Also do Garden Cats exist? Or is a Garden Dog Still better at hunting mice? I’ve heard some Australian Dog Breeds were specifically bred to hunt mice but do they do a better job than Cats? Are there any cats specifically bred to hunt mice?
While dogs are capable of a wide range of jobs, I think you are trying to cover too much with just one dog.
There are many breeds which were used for rodent hunting, they are usually smaller dogs which could more easily get into small spaces and burrows.
Larger dog breeds would be better to deter large animals or people. As far as trampling plants I think it just comes down to good training and accessable areas.
Specific highly inbred breeds do tend to have correlating health issues as they age, but they also retain a lot of the instinctual traits they were selected and bred for.
You would likely be best off having a mixed dog that you knew had some of the genetics of breeds with traits you are looking for. (I have a highly mixed mutt, but I know she probably has some pointer in her because when she was a younger dog she would regularly ‘point’.
I think this will come down to training more than anything. I would highly recommend finding a good dog with the physical traits you need and training it.
There are so many dogs that get dumped and breeding, even if there are people who will take the dogs, just continues to add to the population and the problem.
I personally would not recommend a cat.
They are much more difficult to work with and while some are good at hunting, many tend to just play with their “prey” and can also negatively impact the bird and lizard population pretty bad. If you get a cat be sure to have it spayed or neutered because you will end up with problems there too.
I don’t mind having multiple dogs if that’s what’s needed to get the job done. As long as they all respect me & my garden & don’t mind eating garden veggies too.
Might geese be a good way to scare deer & groundhogs too? Instead of using cats.
Excellent! Training is easier & faster than doing dog breeding or making a dog landrace, I just thought certain genetics are untrainable. Do I look for trainable genetics or do genetics not play a huge role in dog training since every dog was bred to be trainable right? Does a Dog Landrace even make sense as a concept?
oh my… , wait so the “off types” just get dumped or trown outside to fend for themselves from a dog breeding project?
Do we have too many dogs? or do we have too many deer & groundhogs?
Some dog breeds tend to be easier to train than others, especially depending on what they are being trained for. Most mixed “breeds” or mutts are good dogs and can be trained if you put in the time and work.
Dogs have been selected for “good” traits for thousands of years, they are normally great. Unfortunately some dogs get abused and end up with trauma related issues.
There are different kinds of “breeders” and I don’t want to imply all dog breeding is bad. There are people who breed and train working dogs which are specialized and necessary for certain settings.
There are also a lot of people who breed dogs just to sell as puppies (and also people who end up with puppies by accident or just carelessness) and a lot of times when those puppies just don’t sell and/or start to cost more money to feed many people choose to just dump them.
It is a big problem, especially if you live in the country which is where people like to dump animals. Depending on the location you may get multiple dogs dumped multiple times a year.
Yes we have a huge problem of too many dogs and cats and animal shelters usually cannot sustain the numbers which is why kill shelters do exist.
Yes there are also too many deer in certain areas which is why there are differences in hunting seasons and tag limits in different areas.
Im not sure about ground hogs. Here we have lots of rabbits and squirrels. And lately mice and rats too
A lot of animals like that have population imbalances due to changes in the natural environment. Urbanization, reduction of natural predators, changes in ecosystems like plant food, cover, etc.
Fantastic! I’ve never had a dog so it’s really a new experience for me, glad to know I can teach pretty much any breed. I’m not specialized to handle a traumatized dog. Total noob when it comes to having a dog as a pet.
So in other words, totally opposite of a Landrace Breeder Perspective?
Puppies that don’t sell get dumped out? I thought they get donated to a shelter or are they already stuffed with overcapacity?
kill shelters!?
WHA!?!?!?! How in the what does Kill & Shelter go together in the same word? What is that? How do you shelter something to kill it? I don’t understand this concept or is it like how we do with Pigs, Chickens where we shleter them with a good life to kill later for their food?
But in america we don’t eat dogs right? why the need for a kill shelter?
That makes sense, but oh man… those deer are annoying. They literally destoryed my Ninja garden which is why I’m back to getting a Dog to Solve the deer issue should it arrise wherever I move to.
Also if your dog kills the deer, it’s perfectly legal as long as you didn’t do it right?
In Permaculture/organic style of gardening, it’s all about encouraging & favoring the environment towards the predator to attack your pest which is why we don’t spray plants with herbicides. How does that concept work with animal pests?
Wolf deficiency? Hunting? Or getting more Dogs?
Yeah with the animal shelters it is just an overcapacity issue. They just have too many animals and not enough resources to keep them.
It’s a lot harder to get the older animals adopted, people like puppies and kittens. It’s sad but reality.
For deer it would be unlikely that a dog would actually catch/kill one, except maybe a fawn. A dog will likely keep the deer away just with the barking.
Hunting is only good for population control, your limited to only a few deer per season so it’s not going to prevent them from eating your garden. (Also hunting season is opposite growing season, at least in most places)
You could use a hotwire / electric fence.
I see, overcapacity issue, is this why some dogs get put down?
Cuz that’s really sad…
Hmm… hunting is only good way to control deer populations, does this mean wolves are no longer needed if humans fill that role?
Hotwire or electric fence maybe, I was just hoping my dog could do the job of a fence. Which is what I was searching for.
Yes, it is usually the older animals that are selected to be put down.
But there are a lot of really great organizations that work hard to get animals to good homes.
Wolves are an apex predator and are very necessary.
The problem is we change the landscape and environment. A lot of the ways we manipulate our own living areas actually greatly benefit the animals we consider pests.
We bring in plants they use as cover, we grow agricultural crops they usue as food, and we push out predators.
Down here we don’t even have wolves. We have coyotes, bobcats & mountain lions, some regions have black bears. Nothing that is a major predator to the deer population.
So it’s mainly just hunting (including government population control programs), disease, or being hit by vehicles. And even with that the populations get way out of control in many places.
We had a rat terrier when I was a kid that was an efficient mole chaser. Completely ignored birds, but all over rodents. For small mammals, I would also recommend adopting a terrier or hound or mix thereof. There are plenty of them out there, as noted routinely dumped in rural areas (my folks now have a chihuahua-corgi-? mutt that our wheat cutting crew found dumped next to their trailer years ago. Milo wasn’t a fan of the nomadic life, so my dad brought him home).
I used to watch this guy a lot on youtube, you would probably find it interesting…
He has trained minks and dogs to hunt rats. It’s really cool to watch and he is very skilled/talented when it comes to training and working with animals. If I remember correctly he also does some falconry.
I have a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian mix. Both breeds are livestock gardian dogs. She is in the goat feild which conects to a pole barn which is next to my unfenced garden. We have lots of deer but I’ve never had any deer predation problems in the garden. I have observed her barking at deer some distance off from our property. So I chock my good “luck” to her placing a barking umbrella over garden.
Downside: Barking. At all hours. Day and night. Anything that falls into the “it doesn’t belong here” catagory in her dog brain. I’ve gotten used to it but it took a while and if you have neighbors close by they may not be interested in getting used to it.
We have a Pitbull crossed with a German Shepard that i was worried about at first because he was constantly harassing my chicken and rabbit tractors. You need some of that “gameness” tho if you expect it to do battle with raccoons and feral cats. Expect to get it stitched up after at least one fight until it knows how to shake em into oblivion. It’s not for the faint of heart. As far as training, you just have to be present whenever it’s digging. They want to please you, you just have to catch them in the act so they know what it is you do and don’t like. Training comes natural when it’s a true member of your family.
, wait so the “off types” just get dumped or trown outside to fend for themselves from a dog breeding project?
why the need for a kill shelter?