A Guard Dog's Tale

This is Lila...

She's part Black Lab and part Chow.  One cold January morning nearly 12 years ago I dreamed that we found a fluffy, black puppy in our barn.  So when the kids rushed into my bedroom hollering, "Mom we found a puppy in the barn!!!"  I said, "Yeah, I know!"  Only to realize, of course, that I had only been dreaming.  She was exactly the same black fluffball I saw in my dream.  Go figure.

This is Daisy...

She's our Great Pyrenees that we bought in early spring of 2010.  Honestly I think that her previous owners had some inbreeding thing going on because Daisy just isn't what a GP ought to be.  Right from the get-go she hated being with the other animals.  She only wanted to be with us.  If we put her in with the goats and sheep she would terrorize them by grabbing their tails with her teeth while they drug her all through the fields bawling to high heaven!!  She jumps on us (though we worked from day one on this issue knowing that it's not such a big deal at first--but who needs a 100 pound monster jumping on you.  We have to train the goats not to jump on us too!!), tears up everything she can, steals things and hides them and is a general pain in the behind.  I'm committed to our animals and feel a strong sense of responsibility.  Sigh.  So we keep holding out that one of these days she will mellow out and be a good dog--though she'll never be a good livestock dog short of a divine healing!  But there is one thing she does very well with all her heart...

Guard Lila...

It's comical really.  She's obsessed with guarding Lila. 

The move has been really hard on Daisy and Lila.  They both grew up wandering our 32+ acres of ground and also the neighbor's endless fields.  Now they are stuck in a fenced-in back yard.  We live on a highway with two dog kennels bordering our property.  So they have to be fenced.  I console myself that they will adjust in time.  Right?

Daisy can scale the chain link fence just like the Velociraptor inside the compound on Jurassic Park 3.  So she isn't just fenced in.  We have to chain her up as well.  She's on a nice long "run" but sometimes Lila is just too far away for her liking.  Bark, bark, BARK!!! 

It's been stressful!!  Lila has issues with noises--particularly gunshots, fireworks and thunder.  She goes beserk and has to come inside to be with us.  MORE barking from Daisy!! 

And what will we do when Lila finally passes away????  I hate to think!!  She's definitely getting old!!  Sigh.  

For now we just take it all one day at a time.