All business.....business hours 24/7. Or how not to test guardian skills.

My dogs have many many jobs here. They work with clients, they work with client dogs to help take pressure off, or hold stock in place, they are watchdogs, demo dogs at Petco, accompany me everywhere. They are expected to be on the job unless they are in a crate. However, if you come afterhours, don't assume my dogs will treat you or your dog the same as during an apointment.

The neighbor's dog, Sam, has been coming over lately - partially since my girls are coming in, but also just because he's a great friendly dog that sees us out in the yard and comes over to hang out. However, this is not acceptable to my dogs, especially the ones with good guardian skills. We chase him off, as I don't want him to get injured or my dogs injured pulling a tooth out yelling at him through the fence, or him get hit by a vehicle.

The other night, I pull in late from Petco, let Brick out of the truck, am getting out and unloading my bag. Brick zips around the back of the house to the back porch, which then is followed by a squeak, and a streak of cream comes from around back to somewhere behind my truck, followed by a streak of blue. I get back behind the truck, and there's Brick, silently grabbing and slamming Sam to the ground every time he tries to get up. No barking. No "Hey you, get off my lawn!" commotion. Just run down, grab and hold. The only sound was Sam squeaking and shrieking. Sigh. I called Brick off, and ran Sam off the property. All I can figure is that Brick smelled him as soon as he got out of the truck, since there was no barking at all, and everything happened very fast.

One would hope that this, combined with the incident where he loaded into a client's dog aggressive dog's crate while we were herding (followed by said dog loading into the crate and kicking Sam's ass) that Sam would decide that maybe the dogs here don't like him.

Nope.

I let Pow out a few nights ago, into the backyard(fenced). Not 5 seconds later there was loud dog screams, and I ran out to find Pow silently attempting to dispatch the not so silent intruder in the backyard. He was quite serious about it. Got him called off, sat him, put Sam out of the yard and chased him down the driveway myself. Sam, although bloody, wasn't too worse for wear, and looked fine when I saw him the next day, probably because I got out there in time. He had gone from shrieking to gurgling by the time I got my shoes on and got out there, but Pow calls off decently.

This is not the way I want to be testing my dogs' guardian skills. It really isn't. It is very interesting to me though, that my dogs are safe with client dogs, will work with client dogs, safe out and about, but are very quick to step in when there's an intruder. As it should be. Would just rather it be a fox or opossum, not the nice neighbor's dog! Yes, I've explained to them. I'm going to offer to take him to get neutered when I take Teletabby, which will help. I'm not sure any dogs other than mine are fixed on this road. But atleast I'm not the type to shoot Sam for looking at my livestock.