In contrast to the ease in which Quincy Dog has integrated into our household and farm, I submit to you, dear reader, this P.I.T.A. canine. She is coming up on her two-year-old birthday and is still quite juvenile. One day last fall, I was out doing chores, she had escaped again, and I heard a ruckus near the chickens. She’d caught one that had flown outside their pen. I started chasing her with the ATV and she bolted, chicken in mouth. I finally caught up with her in the tree farm next door. She was laying low, and looked like she was burying the victim. She bolted again and ran for home. I looked and looked for the chicken, but couldn’t find it. I retraced our steps, white feathers marking the trail. It wasn’t dropped anywhere. I drove back to the tree farm and walked the row where I saw her lying down. Only to find the chicken, stuffed head-first down an excavated tree hole. The chicken was relatively unharmed and wound up surviving the ordeal. But I had lost my patience. On a day that this crazy dog let me touch her, I nabbed her, and tied her up to a stake in the ground, like a dog in the seventies. She was quite sad-faced about this new curtailment.
This was last winter. She was rail-thin, shedding strangely in December, and had a weird, hard-swollen vagina; raising concerns about some kind of hormonal problem. She’d had a “split heat” the prior year, so this added to the suspicion that something was amiss in her endocrine system. I had the vet run a blood panel on her, but nothing emerged. We agreed that spaying her would be a good thing to try, possibly eliminating hormonal weirdness as well as some of the desire to wander. Not to mention, eliminating the risk that she’d be bred by a coyote and produce for me a litter of ten nightmare hybrid puppies.
It took some time and plotting to get a surgery appointment and a plan in place for getting her there. We drugged her for the trip. It didn’t help much. I managed to drag her into, and through, the clinic to the back room, where they promptly knocked her out. The vet said she had a huge and very bloody uterus. It’s possible she was in another split heat, rather than clear of her cycle that should have ended weeks prior.
For her recovery and time in the cone, I bought a 6-foot chain link kennel run and set it up inside the barn, so she’d be double-secure. I bedded it with shavings so I could scoop her poop and pee. Which ended up being somewhat irrelevant, because she barely ate and drank in her two weeks of sequestration. By the second week, she was somewhat anemic and I was concerned. I took her back to the vet for a follow-up exam, but was not able to drug her that time. On the way, she pooped in my van twice, and stepped in it. 
I suggested we do the exam in my van, so as not to create further drama and mess. The staff insisted we bring her in to an exam room. Once inside, she peed about a gallon on the floor. 
Well, I tried to warn them. (Pet vets, <sigh>.) There were no findings from the exam. So I put her back in the pasture, tied up again. She instantly returned to normal. So, it was just kennel stress that was putting her in a bad state.
Now that she seems stable, I’m starting my next iteration in schooling attempts. A friend of mine from Illinois shared this brilliant invention for preventing digging under fences, a PVC head collar that’s rather big for squeezing through holes. It’s taken a week or two of design tweaks, but I think this may work. Right now, she’s inside a hotwire enclosure, but once I’m satisfied this thing will stay on her head, I’m going to turn her loose in the larger pasture and see how it goes.
I’ve pondered different outcomes for this dog. I considered re-homing her, with my craigslist ad reading something like this “90 lb chicken killer and livestock chaser, prefers to range over a 20 mile radius, can escape any fencing, frequently goes feral and cannot be caught. Other times, extremely silly. Not leash broken or housebroken or socialized to strangers. Knows no commands, does not come when called. Eats a hell of a lot. $100 re-homing fee.” 
Given that, the only remaining option is to persist and get her trained and functioning in the role that she was bred for. My prior Maremma, Bronte, was a similar challenge, though maybe not quite as bad, as she was not an escape artist. I worry about all the ways she could come to harm: escaping and getting hit by car, getting shot by another farmer, getting that stick or some other training contraption stuck in something, suffocating, drowning or starving to death. Or, from fighting coyotes or domestic dogs. Then I realize, it’s the main job of these dogs to be put into a position of risk. Their role is to mitigate the potential for thousands of dollars in damage to livestock. LPDs in wolf country regularly get killed, so by comparison, our farm is much safer. But, for all LPDs, their fate is a complex brew of survival odds, valor, hardiness, scrappiness and ability to learn and adapt. Crossing my fingers she figures out her proper role in the coming year and settles into its weighty responsibility.
The Collie Farm Blog 
March 19, 2018 at 1:43 pm
Ah, the teenage LGD, I too have one at this time. Don’t give up, the Calvary exists for this. A facebook page called “Learning About LGDs”, almost 12000 members, no nonsense, and all the help you may need! There are any number of groups, but this one understands the needs of the working dog. If you aren’t a “facebooker”, now is the time, it is worth it. Here is the link.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LearningAboutLGDs/
Best of luck!
March 19, 2018 at 4:00 pm
Praying you’re at the tail end of the nightmare teenage phase…
March 20, 2018 at 3:28 am
Vickie, thanks, I do follow some LGD FB pages, though I find they tend to be geared more towards the beginner level and also often have not-so-great advice. 🙂 I trained and showed dogs for more than 30 years, so feel like I’m a competent dog trainer. But, I also think there is a limit to the investment a person wants to, or can feasibly make in a working dog. Ideally, the dog does come with reasonable instincts and hard-wired behavior that just needs to be shaped. This dog has less innate working drive than I would prefer, and probably wasn’t prepped as much in her first 8 weeks as would have been ideal. I wouldn’t buy from this breeder again; but at the time of her procurement, I had few options and great urgency. So, it is what it is, I’ll work with her another year and see where we land, and then re-assess.
March 20, 2018 at 5:49 am
I wonder how many complaints of animal abuse you will get from your concerned neighbor over the stick head 😉
March 21, 2018 at 1:06 am
M, ah, what a coil! Sorry to hear about your canine issues. That pup has such sad eyes. Her pix could be used in one of those those gut wrenching ASPCA ads. Reminds me of my first pet, a Heinz 57 mutt that shared my boyhood. I wanted him to be a huntin’ dog and when he killed a mouse, I dog-shamed him by stringing the dead rodent on a lanyard around his neck. I left it on for three days before I felt shamed myself. We’ve had three dogs since then, none “service” animals, but one thing I’ve learned about dogs is they are totally unpredictable. I wish I could remember the Tom McGuane ss about the guy whose boss paid him to pick up and deliver a “top of the line” expensive bird dog. Somewhere along the line on the return trip, the $$$ dog runs off. When the narrator shares his plight with a gas station attendant, the gas jockey pretty much sums up canine capriciousness–as my experience has it. In deference to the “family friendliness” of your blog, I can’t share the quote but will try to find the story title for you to reference. TMJ
March 21, 2018 at 2:50 am
Andrea, yeah, it may be a problem. Knock on wood, we haven’t had complaints in several years now, it seems all the neighbors have acclimated to the gig. The friend from whom I learned about this device, however, did have a lot of neighbor objection. Brinsa has gotten pretty used to the thing already, and runs around full speed playing.
March 21, 2018 at 3:11 am
TMJ, ah, yes, even purebreds can be less consistent than we’d prefer! She definitely puts on a sad face when being photographed, she gets very submissive and pathetic when anything is “done” to her, including just taking a picture. But in real life, she is zany!
December 31, 2020 at 9:43 pm
I know it’s been a few years but were you finally able to get this dog to commit to her job? I have a 9 month old female Pyr who has been out most difficult dog to date. I find that the males are a lot less work and trouble and find their jobs much more easily. I am now at the point that you were with this dog- she hasn’t killed chickens yet but that may still be in her bag of tricks? We’ve tried everything and of course everyone has advice from hardcore obedience training to bringing her into the house (that’s never going to happen). I agree about how much work to invest in a working dog who is bred for the job of guardian dog and comes from working parents. I could spend all day training her and she would still be a wreck when she has to be tied up safely in the barn with the flock next to her to keep her from jumping gates, doors, and pen dividers to head off to god knows where. If you have any advice, I’d love to hear it.
January 1, 2021 at 2:06 am
Lydia, yes, I’ve mostly got her under control now, but she is still a challenge. The head yoke worked well, though she would break them on occasion so I always had to have a backup. Now I’m mostly containing her with hotwire and that works pretty well. She still chases sheep a little bit now and then, but only for a min, so doesn’t do damage. I think it’s just a matter of time and getting them to calm down with age and accept their living conditions.
I’ve recently gotten a new pup to eventually integrate with her. They’re already fast friends, but I limit their time together so that he spends most of his time with sheep in the barn. He is a different temperament altogether, very conservative and home-bodied, so I’m hoping he will be a further anchor to keep her grounded.