MAISY
When we set out to find a working livestock guardian dog (or puppy), we found that they were extremely hard to come by. Either they were way out of our price range or way out of our way. We ended up going with out of the way and got our female, Maisy, from a ranch in Montana. Rather than getting her between 8-10 weeks, as is standard for puppies, we wanted an older puppy that had been raised by her mom and trained on how to work and behave around a variety of livestock. Maisy was 6 months old when we brought her home, and our experience with her was so much better than other LGDs we had brought home at the standard 8 week age. While she still required some training, it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive. We didn’t need to socialize her, she already knew how to behave around other dogs because her mom taught her. We didn’t need to potty train her, her mom had trained her to do her business on the outskirts of the property rather than on the front lawn. We didn’t need to worry about her with the animals, she had already had a lot of exposure to them. Our biggest job was to train her to the boundaries, which we found was actually very simple with an invisible fence – she was trained by the end of the first day. Livestock guardian dogs are notorious for being stubborn, strong willed, and difficult to train. By letting Maisy’s mom have the time needed to train her, we got to bypass a lot of the headache that often comes with this breed!

TEDDY
We picked up Teddy from a working horse farm in Idaho when he was 7 months old. He came pre-trained by incredible working LGD parents and it took us 4 weeks to hear him bark for the first time. He is quiet, subdued, and keenly aware of his surroundings. He doesn’t bark until after he assesses the situation, a trait that we love! He is 3/4 Great Pyrenees and has that incredible GP mane and coat, and 1/4 Anatolian Shepherd – just enough to have the herding instinct when we need it without it being a constant desire to fulfill. Teddy is by far the best male LGD we’ve ever had, and a wonderful compliment to Maisy’s personality and skill set. He intuitively understands that our family is his number one priority to protect. A

PUPPIES
We have seen the need for good working LGDs in our area, and with the exploding homesteading movement, the demand has only increased. Teddy and Maisy are both strong and healthy candidates for breeding, with excellent temperaments and traits that we are confident in passing on. We had great success with out 2022 litter, and have been thrilled to get continued updates that our pups have gone on to be some of the best working LGDs our farm customers have ever had. We choose to only have one litter per year because our dogs are first and foremost a part of our family and farm. We don’t want to overtax Maisy, and we think it’s really important for her health, the puppies’ health, and for the sake of producing a quality group of puppies that we are able to pour our time, energy and attention into that it is best to only do one litter per year. 

TRAINING:
Our hope is that we can do for local homesteads and farms what the Montana & Idaho Ranchs did for us – provide a working LGD that has been exposed to farm life as much as possible at a reasonable cost. We are especially focused on training the puppies with chickens as we have observed this to be the biggest problem area with LGDs. In our opinion, it is critical that puppies be exposed to chickens constantly from the time they open their eyes so that their is ample time for their mother to teach them that chickens are not something exciting to chase and eat. We accomplish this training in steps. From the time they are born, there are chicks chirping in brooders and coops all around them. At 4 weeks, they are moved to a run that shares a fence with chickens so that they are seeing, hearing, and living alongside the chickens without the ability to touch them. At 6 weeks, they are moved to a new run where they live with several chickens in the run with them for the remainder of their time with us. During the day, they are let out of their puppy run so that they can follow their parents around and they learn to work the farm. While we can’t guarantee one of our pups will never kill a chicken or other livestock animal, we can guarantee we have put more effort toward that training than anyone we know! Besides chickens, the puppies also share a fence with sheep, llamas, cows and neighboring dogs. They also regularly interact with our pigs and are smothered with love by our (11) kids of all ages. The most important traits they can learn is how to behave around people and how to behave around animals, and 6-12 weeks is a pivotal impressionable window for this foundation to be built. By letting Teddy & Maisy train them during this time frame, we believe you will have much greater success (and a lot less hair pulling) in transitioning them from the infamous “puppy stage” to a working adult dog.

FOOD
The quality of the feed determines the quality of the animal. This is no less true of dogs than any other animal on our farm and while we will never eat our dogs or anything that comes from them like we do our other livestock, they are our hardest working employees and here for the long haul, and that’s worth investing in. We give them a mixture of raw meat harvested from our farm, raw eggs from our chickens, and high quality dog food. Maisy’s first litter was an unassisted whelping of 12 puppies and only 1 was lost. They have a clean bill of health and no signs of genetic issues or diseases, we know this is due mostly to healthy parents that have an excellent diet! 

PRICING AND RESERVATIONS:

We are in the process of taking pictures for the website but so excited to share that this litter has both the dark badger markings (similar to the photos of last years puppies) AND cream badger markings instead of the typical plain white coloring. This litter of pups are absolutely stunning!

All puppies will be $900. Reservation is $200 (which is non-refundable for cancellation but will be immediately refunded in the event that something should happen on our end) and we collect the remaining $700 at time of pick up.

Puppies will get a full vet check and their first round of shots before leaving our farm.