dejavoodoo114
True BYH Addict
Some of you already know my history and struggles, for those of you who don't I will outline them here. I have had two GPs for over 5 years, Smith and Wesson.
Smith is the older one by a few months, he loves babies of all species but once they grow up he looses interest. He prefers to stay at the house and chase humans away, we love him for this, but if Wesson started chasing off coyotes, Smith would get up, look at Wesson, act like he was going to assist, then sit back down like "eh, he has this"...
Wesson has almost always been our super star (there were times when he was a puppy...). Anyway, Wesson protected the goats, the pigs, and the chickens (and our neighbors calves) very well. We stopped loosing any chickens around the time Wesson hit 18 months. Then a while later we started loosing them again, next thing we know, Wesson is chasing away hawks from our property. No more dead chickens, chewed up goats or chewed up pigs. The next few years were great, we never had to worry about the animals because Wesson had our back.
Then last summer Wesson got sick with Neospora.
This is a protozoa and is not curable once it gets into a dogs spinal chord. We were able to stop the progression but the damage was done. Somewhere around 80 chickens dead in two weeks and suddenly we were seeing coyotes again! 
We already knew that we needed more LGDs to protect our quickly growing herds and had been looking at different breeds for the past year. Suddenly, instead of buying puppies the next Spring and letting Wesson train them, we needed them right away. We had already narrowed down our search to 1) Akbash, 2) Kangal, 3) Anatolian. After talking to multiple breeders and seeing the first two we realized they were not the right fit for our farm situation. While looking at them though, we ran across the Boz. In September of 2016, Kimber arrived.
Kimber was everything we had hoped for. Her breeder was amazing and raised her right. She was comfortable and calm around the pigs and goats from the get go. Wesson didn't want her around the chickens for the first few weeks so we respected his wishes. Of course, Kimber is fine around the chickens as well.
In January, our next Boz, Vulcan, arrived. His breeder knew he had issues and sent him to me knowing I would never breed him and pass on his problems. Unfortunately, while he has good instincts, his joints will confine him to the same small pasture as Wesson. Both Vulcan and Wesson are good as long as they don't have to travel too far.
This brings us to where we were last week, one young LGD, Kimber, who is doing a good job protecting the goats and sundry, two crippled LGDs, Wesson and Vulcan, and one LGD who only cares about chasing people away not four legged predators. ONE HEALTHY DECENT LGD IS NOT ENOUGH TO PROTECT 32 ACRES, over a hundred chickens, goats, and pigs!!!We knew this, we were hoping that if Kimber continued to be Little Miss Awesome and healthy to boot, we would breed her. The pups would help us/her with having the RIGHT amount of LGDs for our farm. We simply could not afford to purchase another at this time with everything else that has been going on.
This is what happens when an LGD doesn't have back up!
Friday night Kimber was fine. Saturday we went out to the front and she came up to us like this. I hung up on my neighbor and called the vet. While waiting for a call back, I checked the others. None of them even had a scratch. I was not surprised, none of them have a chance of keeping up with Kimber. Luckily my vet called me back quickly and Kimber loaded willingly, if painfully, into the van. (I am so glad I worked with her on her vehicle issues!) There were two of my vets there even though the clinic was closed. The first, who I talked to over the phone, was surprised and said "that is even worse than you said!" (I really don't think so, I think it was because I wasn't freaking out
) My other vet saw her as well, "Wow, that's bad!" Yes, that is why I brought her... On a weekend... and didn't take care of it myself... Kimber recognized her and went straight up to her for love. The vet was able to manipulate it and get a good idea of how bad it was.
Now, this is the vet where I work. Kimber wasn't the only emergency and they were didn't have enough help. I helped sedate Kimber and got her on the table, then went to assist in an emergency goat c-section. I know, leaving Kimber was terrible. I did it for three reasons, 1) I have helped clean a lot of wounds and have never seen or assisted in a goat c-section
, 2) I absolutely trusted the vet who was working on her, and 3) the other assistant they had has helped a lot with wound cleaning and doesn't care for livestock but I do. 
We finished the goat long before they finished cleaning out Kimber's injury.
Kimber was under for more than 3 hours while they cleaned out the wound and assessed the damage to the muscles.
This is what they found:
Smith is the older one by a few months, he loves babies of all species but once they grow up he looses interest. He prefers to stay at the house and chase humans away, we love him for this, but if Wesson started chasing off coyotes, Smith would get up, look at Wesson, act like he was going to assist, then sit back down like "eh, he has this"...
Wesson has almost always been our super star (there were times when he was a puppy...). Anyway, Wesson protected the goats, the pigs, and the chickens (and our neighbors calves) very well. We stopped loosing any chickens around the time Wesson hit 18 months. Then a while later we started loosing them again, next thing we know, Wesson is chasing away hawks from our property. No more dead chickens, chewed up goats or chewed up pigs. The next few years were great, we never had to worry about the animals because Wesson had our back.
Then last summer Wesson got sick with Neospora.
This is a protozoa and is not curable once it gets into a dogs spinal chord. We were able to stop the progression but the damage was done. Somewhere around 80 chickens dead in two weeks and suddenly we were seeing coyotes again! We already knew that we needed more LGDs to protect our quickly growing herds and had been looking at different breeds for the past year. Suddenly, instead of buying puppies the next Spring and letting Wesson train them, we needed them right away. We had already narrowed down our search to 1) Akbash, 2) Kangal, 3) Anatolian. After talking to multiple breeders and seeing the first two we realized they were not the right fit for our farm situation. While looking at them though, we ran across the Boz. In September of 2016, Kimber arrived.
Kimber was everything we had hoped for. Her breeder was amazing and raised her right. She was comfortable and calm around the pigs and goats from the get go. Wesson didn't want her around the chickens for the first few weeks so we respected his wishes. Of course, Kimber is fine around the chickens as well.
In January, our next Boz, Vulcan, arrived. His breeder knew he had issues and sent him to me knowing I would never breed him and pass on his problems. Unfortunately, while he has good instincts, his joints will confine him to the same small pasture as Wesson. Both Vulcan and Wesson are good as long as they don't have to travel too far.
This brings us to where we were last week, one young LGD, Kimber, who is doing a good job protecting the goats and sundry, two crippled LGDs, Wesson and Vulcan, and one LGD who only cares about chasing people away not four legged predators. ONE HEALTHY DECENT LGD IS NOT ENOUGH TO PROTECT 32 ACRES, over a hundred chickens, goats, and pigs!!!
We knew this, we were hoping that if Kimber continued to be Little Miss Awesome and healthy to boot, we would breed her. The pups would help us/her with having the RIGHT amount of LGDs for our farm. We simply could not afford to purchase another at this time with everything else that has been going on. This is what happens when an LGD doesn't have back up!
Friday night Kimber was fine. Saturday we went out to the front and she came up to us like this. I hung up on my neighbor and called the vet. While waiting for a call back, I checked the others. None of them even had a scratch. I was not surprised, none of them have a chance of keeping up with Kimber. Luckily my vet called me back quickly and Kimber loaded willingly, if painfully, into the van. (I am so glad I worked with her on her vehicle issues!) There were two of my vets there even though the clinic was closed. The first, who I talked to over the phone, was surprised and said "that is even worse than you said!" (I really don't think so, I think it was because I wasn't freaking out
) My other vet saw her as well, "Wow, that's bad!" Yes, that is why I brought her... On a weekend... and didn't take care of it myself... Kimber recognized her and went straight up to her for love. The vet was able to manipulate it and get a good idea of how bad it was. Now, this is the vet where I work. Kimber wasn't the only emergency and they were didn't have enough help. I helped sedate Kimber and got her on the table, then went to assist in an emergency goat c-section. I know, leaving Kimber was terrible. I did it for three reasons, 1) I have helped clean a lot of wounds and have never seen or assisted in a goat c-section
, 2) I absolutely trusted the vet who was working on her, and 3) the other assistant they had has helped a lot with wound cleaning and doesn't care for livestock but I do. We finished the goat long before they finished cleaning out Kimber's injury.Kimber was under for more than 3 hours while they cleaned out the wound and assessed the damage to the muscles.
This is what they found:
- Both holes in the skin were fairly smooth
- There was only one puncture in the skin located between the two holes
- There were punctures in the muscle that were not easy to find
- Tooth or claw made its way in between her ribs and messed up some cartilage
- The muscles were so swollen/filled they had a really hard time determining the extent of the damage
- Ruled out: Barbed wire, neighbors bull, car, coyote/dog, gunshot, anything small
- Whatever it was had a lot of power behind the bite or swipe to cause that kind of trauma to the muscles
- Claws or teeth were used
for a smooth recovery.
