Chrissy 0:00
Chris, welcome back to the dogs over lives. And this is season three. I'm Chrissy Messick, and this is our summer working dog series, and this is where we're going to dive deep into the incredible world of dogs who dedicate their lives working alongside humans. So grab your favorite beverage or enjoy listening to this on the road, and let's explore the full spectrum of what it means to care for the dogs who care for all of us, and maybe learn something about ourselves along the way. Today, I'm talking with Kim Crawmer, who breeds Marema livestock Guardian dogs, and she's also a certified dog trainer. Now I know this is a controversial topic when it comes to the idea of breeders versus rescue dogs. And I wanted to talk about this because it's important that we do have ethical breeders, and not backyard breeders or puppy mills, and this is especially important when it comes to working dogs. So listen to her journey with an open mind, of her becoming an ethical dog breeder, and the steps she took to get better, be responsible and accountable. She's one of the good ones. So welcome. Kim Kramer, is that how you say your last name? Yes, thank you. So thank you for being on the show. And I think this will be a unique topic to discuss about livestock Guardian dogs, and I think it'll be very interesting for people. Do you want to introduce yourself and just tell us where you live, what you're doing and and the dogs that you have in your life? Okay?
Kim 1:30
My name is Kim Crawmer. I own a business called Prancing Pony farm. I am in central California. I breed and train marimba sheep dogs, which are a type of livestock Guardian dogs, similar to Great Pyrenees, except that marimbas are from Italy, and I also breed dairy goats. Okay? And I have a lot of dogs. I do have four house dogs. One is a marema, one is a Cocker Spaniel, one is a Shizu, and one is a boxer. And then I have a lot of working livestock, Guardian dog, marimbas that live outside. Were you affected by the fires at all? No, not at all. Thankfully, where we live, it's like farm country. It's there's not much to burn. So we're not in that area. I mean, we're probably a few hours from there. I'm surprised we don't have any smoke. Usually we get smoke whenever there's fires, but a lot of times, I think it's more if the fires are up north. We had really bad smoke a few years ago, so bad that it think it made some of my puppies sick. Oh, wow, yeah. But thankfully, we haven't gotten I guess the wind's not blowing in the right direction or something, right.
Chrissy 2:40
Yeah, thank goodness. So can you tell us a little bit about your professional journey, kind of, how you ended up, you know, breeding maremas.
Kim 2:48
Okay, yeah. So my professional journey started when I was 14 years old. Probably I always loved dogs. Always had dogs, but my parents, they would go to the dog pound. We'll pick out a couple of dogs, bring them home, keep them long enough for us kids to get attached, and then they'd get bored with them and get rid of them. So it was always a constant, you know, lots of different types of dogs, but they didn't stay very long. And then, you know, always had dogs, cats, little guinea pigs and hamsters and things like that. And then when I was 14, I walked into a what I thought was a pet shop. My brother had gone there and told me there were some ducks there, and I went over to see them, and it was actually a grooming shop. And when I looked around, I saw the dog hair all over the floor, and I asked them if they would hire me to sweep up the dog hair. And they said, No, we don't need anybody to do that. But do you want to learn how to bathe and blow dry dogs? So I was Yeah, sure. So I started working there on Saturdays, and worked there until I got married, eventually working full time when I graduated from high school. So I learned to groom dogs. In the meantime, I also started breeding Cocker Spaniels, and I always loved horses. Another thing I always ask my parents, and they always said, No, can we get a horse? Can I get a horse? And my boss at that grooming shop had horses. She had Arabian horses, and she started taking me out where her horses were. And I ended up getting my fourth first horse through her. It wasn't her horse, but I got it through her and my second horse also. So paid for it myself, with the job, the money I earned. That was really the beginning.
Chrissy 4:27
And then so you started breeding cocker spaniels. And then how did you get to maramus? And how did you learn to do it like ethically? That's, you know, that's really important thing that we're going to discuss, is ethical dog breeding. And so how did you get to the point of learning how to do it ethically and moving to maremas
Kim 4:47
When my husband retired, a couple of years after he retired, we bought this farm, and all those years of from living in Virginia and experiencing predators, I didn't have a problem with my goats, but I would have. Like possums and stuff try to come get my chickens and get, you know, geese. I had all kinds of birds and they, you know, so I knew predator. Little predators were a problem. I didn't experience bigger predators. Even though there were bears and stuff there, I never really saw any but, but being in California, we saw coyotes a lot at the boarding stables, there were Coyote. Sometimes in broad daylight, you would see them run, you know, go through the place. I had places where I boarded, where they had chickens, and they would forget to lock their chickens up one day, and then the chickens would all be gone the next day. So I knew predators were a problem, and I knew it was going to have little I wasn't worried about the horses, but I was planning to have, you know, goats and chickens and all that. So I knew all along. I had been thinking I was going to get a herding dog. I always loved Australian shepherds and whatever. But the other thing I noticed was everybody who has a boarding stable, everybody who has horses, has herding dogs. And what do those dogs do all the time, herd? You know, they're always tasting nipping. That's their that's what they're bred for. I'm like, that won't go over well with little, tiny goats, because I have miniature goats, it won't go over well with little, small goats and with chickens and stuff like that. So I even though I had encountered livestock Guardian dogs as a as a groomer, Great Pyrenees and Anatolians, and even like kuvas, I didn't really quite understand what they were, but I started learning what livestock Guardian dogs were, and understanding the difference between a livestock Guardian dog and like a herding dog or other types of dogs. And I was like, oh, that's what I need. That's exactly what I need. I need something that's going to guard the animals, not chase them around and nip at them and whatever we knew we were buying this farm, I knew I was going to need a dog, you know, as soon as possible. So I was looking for the dogs, and I didn't really know about the registered livestock Guardian dogs. I just didn't know that world. So all I could do was Craigslist. That's really where I was looking, you know. And there's a few websites and a few there's Facebook, which is a terrible place to get information on anything, really, but especially livestock Guardian dogs, you know, you have to go with what you can find. So it was on Facebook groups. There's few websites here and there. I'm learning about different breeds and whatever. And what's the differences? I knew that gray Pyrenees are extremely common. I only learned about maremas through that little bit of research, and I found these two different breeders on Craigslist, one bred Great Pyrenees and one bread maremas, and both bred registered dogs. But the marimba breeder, he wasn't selling his puppies as registered. His parent dogs were registered, but he just didn't want to bother with registering the litter the Great Pyrenees. They were. The Great Pyrenees were a little more expensive because they were registered. I was talking to both of them, and everything they were telling me was leading me to the marimbas. So the marema breeder would say, you know, Great Pyrenees are really hard to contain. They don't they're they escape a lot, and they don't really respect fences and whatever they call them, the great wanderies And the disappear, which they do, you know. And he said, they're hard to keep in. And I would go back to the the Great Pyrenees breeder, and I would say, Well, I heard this about Great Pyrenees. And she would say, oh, no, it's not that hard. I have, like, several strands of barbed wire, a couple few strands of hot wire, but my dogs, Oh, no. I was like, it's not really very encouraging. And would say, the marimba breeder would say, and this is very true. In other countries, they do show maremas, but in America they don't. They're not, in a case, a AKC registered breed. They have their own registry, and the marimba club has worked very hard to keep them as working dogs. They don't even advocate them as companions. I do now, I didn't, that's a whole different side subject, but I do advocate them as companions in the right situation, but they didn't. They never wanted AKC to get a hold of the breed, because it's true, AKC ruins a lot of breeds. Not AKC particularly, but just when people start showing, when you start changing, and this is true from science, when you start changing the shape of the dog, you change the temperament of the dog, you know, yeah. So they hadn't been shown as much. They hadn't been kept as pets and show dogs and all that. So they the idea, at least, is that they have more of their working, working temperament, you know, still intact. And I told that to the Great Pyrenees breeder, and she said, Oh, no, they're great. You know, my dogs are great. I have a cup. This one killed some chickens, and this one killed a goat, you know,
Speaker 1 9:40
everything. I mean, she was being honest, I guess. But at the same time, I was like, I don't think that's what I want. So I ended up buying Olaf, unregistered. I named him Olaf because I knew he was going to be a big, giant white dog. And I wanted to be like, think of him as something cute. And. Sweet and fun, you know? Yeah, yeah. So, so Olaf, he was five months old when he came here. He came from an Angora goat farm, so he had a really good experience with the goats and everything. He was very comfortable. I don't feel like they socialize their puppies with people and stuff like that as much. He's a little quirky sometimes. I mean, he's really good with me, but he's, you know, he just, he was scared and more nervous, like, didn't get that realization. And he even told me his theory was he only handled his dogs enough that he if he needed to, like, get them and do something to them or whatever, but he didn't really handle them a lot. Um, it used to be the fashion with livestock Guardian dogs, and some people still believe that way, but a lot of people are seeing that there's that's not like it would be like the hands off method, right, where they wanted them to bond really well with the livestock, but not be really comfortable with people most dogs, especially in nowadays, in modern society, you know, our farms are not hundreds and hundreds of acres. Generally, it's a small family farm. It's a homestead. You have visitors. You need to take your dog to the vet, you need to groom your dog, you know, all that stuff, so that that method does not work, and it's not necessary. Because I tell my clients, if they ask me if it's okay if they pet their dog or whatever, I'm like dogs can multitask. Think of your livestock Guardian dog is like a working mom or a working dad. They have a job, but you still talk to your mother. You still talk to your husband, your wife like you still get them attention. So yeah, so I got Olaf, he was unregistered, and then we ended up later getting another unregistered female, and we had a few litters with them. I still didn't really know about the health testing and everything, but I was breeding like for the working ability and the temperament, and they were raised in the barn with the goats from day one, you know, all that kind of stuff, lots of attention from all my grandchildren and all that. So the socialization and all that, I was getting really, really good. They were fantastic guardians. I like a lot of breeds, and had a lot of experience with breeds as a groomer. But then as you're grooming them, you learn the temperaments, and you'll learn, okay, this is dog. Is really pretty, but they're this way, or they're that way. This won't necessarily be good for this type of situation, or whatever. I never had another breed that I love, loved enough to want to breed them until marims, partly because I felt like there was a purpose for it. I would be able to help other people, you know, being able to keep my goats and other animals safe, you know, is very important to me, and I want to be able to help people do the same thing. There's something really admirable and really noble about a dog that, literally, if it had to, would lay down its life to protect another species, you know, it's just incredible. So I was like, Okay, I think I want to breed them. We're going to try. So we just, you know, unregistered. Had our first litter. My idea was that if they didn't sell, I would just keep them, because I needed more guardians, you know. And they sold really well. First of all, I was always doing everything right as far as the socialization, and that was that really, really surprised me. When I started buying like, I always assumed that everybody did things the way I did. As far as like, why wouldn't you raise livestock? Guardian dogs with livestock, that's the but I started buying dogs, the registered dogs, what I found was, was that a lot of people breeding them because, you know, cool or something, you know, like they might have a few chickens, or they might have horses or something like that, but those puppies are really being raised as companions. It's people that have really beautiful, nice, fancy places, you know, but their dogs are not getting their puppies are not getting that livestock exposure. So I would have puppies that I would get coming to me at three or four months old, and they are like, What the heck? Like, why are you putting me out here with these goats, like, no, where's my pool? Where's my Jacuzzi. Some would have problems with being aggressive with livestock and chasing whatever. Some were not necessarily that way, but they just, you could just tell they didn't, they weren't bonding. They would, the goats would be here and the dog would be over here, like off by itself. And they eventually adapted, but it's just so much harder, and it's just so that's where I learned, okay, I already knew what I was doing was right, but I just assumed that was just natural. And I'd learned the difference, the importance, the importance, if you want a pet, yeah, go buy from one of those people, but if you want an actual lifestyle, Guardian dog, what? And, you know? And then later, I learned about critical socialization windows and puppies and things like that. If they don't get it before they're 12 weeks old or so, forget it. You know, it's, it's very important.
Chrissy 14:51
I mean, I think a thing that's unique about you is you have a background in, you know, dog training or, you know, qualified education. Communication in dogs, whereas a lot of people don't. So I think that's really important. What you went through the family dog mediation program.
Kim 15:08
So when I had that very first conversation with that board member, and she was, she used to be a breed, a breeder, but she's a Karen Pryor Academy certified training partner, was breeding at the time, obviously, because I ended up buying dogs from her, but when I first talked to her, she told me about puppy culture, and I was like, Oh, that's interesting. I've never heard of that. Do you know what puppy culture is?
Chrissy 15:30
Yeah, yeah. Squirrel moment. Puppy culture is the system that helps breeders track and record their puppies developmental milestones so they can fine tune their activities and meet their Puppy's social, emotional, physical and mental needs to have the best possible opportunity for a well adjusted litter of pups.
Kim 15:49
Oh, yeah. So she told me about puppy culture. I had done clicker training with my horses, and it had been really helpful, and especially I had a rescue horse that was a lot. So it helped a lot. So I was very into clicker training and stuff like that. I hadn't really done it with my dogs, so she told me about puppy culture, and I immediately looked it up, and I bought all the stuff. Bought the whole package, the videos on, you know, streaming, and the book and everything. I still have it sitting right here. Every time I have a litter, I kind of go through it and look through it and and so I learned puppy culture first, but at some point I got onto Karen Pryor Academy. I learned about Karen Pryor Academy. I ended up taking Karen Pryor Academy dog trainer foundations. So that was first. And then I took, like, better vet visits. And there was a puppy, puppy start, right for instructors, just different courses. Through them, she encouraged me to take saying clothiers, Introduction to carrot. So I just started taking different dog courses, you know, and like, let me try this. Let me try that. The legs athology didn't come till just last year, but I took a lot of different stuff and just learning and and dog breeding courses, but a lot of times dog training courses and just and I started implementing those. My first registered litter that I had. They were born the end of 2020 and I did the puppy culture stuff with them, and the clicker training and demanding and all that. Those dogs still to this day they see you, their default behavior is to park their butt on the ground and look at you like so yeah, politely. And I can tell if I'm really busy and I don't do it as much with the puppies, or when I really work at it, the difference between the puppies, I learned about all that stuff and just was taking different courses. I know a lot, but I didn't know as much as I I'm not going to bluff and pretend that I don't know something. I'll tell you if I don't. And I wanted to really know and have more confidence. I wanted to be able to better train my puppies and also better support my clients. I had been kind of thinking about taking the professional, the dog, the Karen Pryor dog trainer, professional, for a really long time. Finally, I was like, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to do it, whether I pass or fail, whatever I'll learn from it, no matter what. Mm, hmm, I enrolled in that. It started October of 2023
Speaker 1 18:15
it was extremely intense. Yeah, study. And, you know, do all the videos, do all the train with the dog. I chose my boxer Luna, because, you know, you would never do that with the marema. They don't have the attention span for it. Yeah, and, and it went through. It was six months, and I learned so much. And then I heard about the legs. Applied ethology soon after that, and I took that right after I came back, it's like everything I already always knew and tried to say. But even more, you know, some people would think, if you need a livestock Guardian dog, you just get a breed that is a livestock Guardian dog. It doesn't matter, and it'll automatically do it. And other people will think, Well, any breed can be a livestock Guardian dog. You could just pick, you know, a Border Collie, and raise it with your sheep, and it could be a livestock Guardian dog. And I always have said, No, it's both. It's nature and nurture. You have to and legs goes even further than that. Leg stands for learning environment, genetics and self. So the genetics of the dog matter what they've learned from puppyhood and on, matter the environment they're raised in, if you're raising them with animals, or if you're raising them on a patio, if you um, and they're with animals, you know, and with people and all that. And then the self is like, is it a male? Is it a female? How old it is? Is it spayed? Is it neutered? Is it, you know, all the, just the individual dog things and all that stuff goes together to make up the dog you see in front of you, and you have to all into account. You can't just, well, it's a border collie. All Border Collies do this. No, they don't. So,
Chrissy 19:54
yeah, I think it's important, like, the the difference that I want to make here, that you're. Doing is, is you've educated yourself. You're breeding dogs ethically. You love your dogs, and you're doing in a way that supports the people who buy them. But it's kind of a controversial topic, you know, like, don't buy from a breeder, just get a rescue. And there are times when people need to get a working dog for their livelihood, and so you're doing it in a way where you're very educated, you know what you're doing. You're not doing it like backyard breeding just to make money. And I that's the difference that I want to make clear here, is that you are not a backyard breeder. You know, you're testing your dogs. You love your dogs. You're giving support to everyone, and the dogs go to loving homes with support, and they make up a vital part of the family,
Speaker 1 20:48
First of all, I think everybody has the right to have a dog they want, whether it's a pet or a working dog or not. But that aside, if you are bringing home a dog that you expect to guard, you know your other animals, where that dog came from, really makes a difference. It really does matter with rescues. I mean, sometimes they're fine, but you really don't know. You just really don't know their history. You don't know how they were raised as a puppy, what their breeding is, their health problems they might have. You don't know if they have a history of aggression with livestock, whatever, and it's just a huge risk. Even buying from breeders is a huge risk. Even buying from supposedly reputable breeders, like some of the dogs I've brought home, are way different than the dogs that I bred, you know, as far as you know. So, yeah, I think it does matter. You know, I get breeder hay, just like all breeders do. And why? I mean, I will have people send me messages and say, why don't you just rescue dogs and train them? I am not that good of a trainer. I cannot fix all the problems. First of all, I'm better at raising puppies. I'm better at getting them when they are in that critical socialization period and doing all the right things and raising them. And yes, I know rest dogs need to be rescued. I definitely understand that, but it's a whole thing, and the whole breeding world what no matter what breed you you're breeding, if all we ever advocate for is rescue, then we are only advocating for bad breeding practices, because that's where all those dogs come from. My dogs don't I have a lifetime return policy on my dogs. I have dogs out there now, several of them who I have taken back because their owner can't keep them. It's not because they're bad dogs. The owner sold their farm. The neighbors were complaining too much about barking things like that. They know for the life of that dog, it can come back. Sometimes they come back and I'm able, I'm able to find them another home. Sometimes they stay here. You know, I've had, and I've also had clients who sold their farm or whatever, and they needed help rehoming them. They didn't come back here. I had a client who had seven dogs. She had gotten six from me, and she gotten one from another breeder. She is a friend of mine, actually good, and they lived near me, and they had goats, they got from me, they had chickens, they had everything. And her husband decided he wanted to move to Missouri. They were getting out of the farm. No more farming, and moving to Missouri, and she had to get rid of all those animals, and I helped her find homes for them. The other breeder did nothing. I was posting on my blog. I posted it to my email list. I posted it to my social media. It was everywhere. Seven livestock Guardian dogs in need of homes, and people were just blowing up, and they all got
Chrissy 23:41
help. Yeah, so it really makes a difference. You know, backyard breeding is when people are just doing it to make money. They don't care about the dog, they don't care about health, they don't care about temperament. There's so many things that are wrong with that, and that's why our rescue, our shelters, are very full,
Kim 24:02
and a big problem with livestock guarding dogs too. That has to do with that. Maybe this is true of all dogs. I had somebody tell me, Well, that's true of all dogs, but 30% of livestock Guardian dogs fail, and failing is means they get dumped, you know, to turned in, gotten rid of, you know, whatever. I'm pretty sure that that is largely due to training problems, the owners not being able to handle the dog, and most people are first time owners, and so you're trying to get this dog, and it's a it's a type of dog most people don't have experience with. They're very different from my Cocker Spaniel, my, you know, a boxer, a Border Collie, they're very different in temperament. People don't understand. They're trying to integrate them with livestock. And then they go to the breeder and they say, I'm having a problem with this. And the breeders like, go to Facebook. I can't help you. Whatever. I give my clients support all the time. I had somebody yesterday texting me one of my. Clients who bought two puppies from me two years ago. He's texting me, and he said, Hey, the two boys are fighting, and I'm not sure what to do, and blah, blah, blah, you know. And I'm like, Okay, we'll do this and do that. And how are they neutered yet? You know, you probably need to go ahead and get them neutered. You know, like most people won't bother so that support that's so important. Here's what's really crazy. I get other breeders referring their clients to me. They've told me, yeah, I bought my dog from such and such, and they she said, I should contact you about the problem I'm having. Like, I'm really thankful that you in fact, I had this client who bought a dog from me about a year and a half ago. She originally came to me looking for puppy. She lives in Indiana, so she originally came to me, and then about a year later, she ended up buying from a breeder somewhere near her, I'm not sure where, but over on the east coast, and she bought a dog from that person. That dog was about a year and a half old, and that's the breeder. The first time this breeder has actually referred people to me a couple times, but that was the first time she said, Go to Kim, because she brought this dog home. And she was like, had her a week. And she's like, I am in over my head. I do not Oh my gosh. She told her to call me, so she called me, and we had this long conversation. The dog was like barking at her husband and things like that, you know. And so I'm telling her, Do this. Do that. She had been with her her parents that whole time. So I said, part of her problem is she's been with other livestock Guardian dogs her whole life, and now she's by herself. So she ended up buying a dog from me. His name is daxo, and she bought this dog from me. He's, he was kind of nervous at first and everything, but once he got settled in and everything, he's just amazing. And she wrote, she's told me multiple times, and she finally wrote a review, and she said it had gone to you first, you know, because the other dog. She said she's a beautiful dog, but she can't be trusted with anything. She's bad. She can't be trusted with livestock. She can't be trusted with her cats, nothing, you know, and DAX was just amazing, and she's like she did. She picked the other breeder because she was closer. But she said it really does matter, you know, if somebody's going to be able to help you or not?
Chrissy 27:21
Yeah. So just to clarify real quick, there's a lot of life live, Doc, Guardian dogs out there. And you kind of mentioned this already, but maramus are from Italy, and there's Great Pyrenees, there's akbash, there's
Kim 27:37
Anatolians, cuvas, there's a lot. I mean, is it just from the country that they're bred from, they originated from? Is that the difference between them pretty much, I think a few that are kind of similar, there's a few that are so overlapping that people aren't. Some people will say it's one breed, and some people will say it's another, and some people will say it's the same, you know, but most the time, Great Pyrenees are from France. Marimbas are from Italy. I think those are the main European dogs. And then a lot of them are from like Turkey and places like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay,
Chrissy 28:10
so what are two big myths about livestock Guardian dogs that you'd like to debunk?
Kim 28:15
Well, one, we kind of touched on, that they just automatically know how to do their job. You know, it doesn't matter. You can get a dog from the dog pound. You can get a dog, you know, whatever. No, they do need that proper early socialization, and they need to have the genetics. And the other one, that's really a huge myth. That's a big problem. And this is also related to what we've talked about. People think, Oh, I'm buying a farm. I'm starting my farm, I'm going to breed goats and chickens, and I'll breed livestock Guardian dogs too. They see them as like being like livestock. Just decide to breed them. It's no big deal. It's easy. There's not much to it. No, you first of all that, that part of it, you know, they think there's not much to it. I feel like to breed livestock Guardian dogs. My opinion is, if you haven't taken courses on training, and you don't have experiences training, you have no business doing it, because you are a trainer, it's different. You know, most companion dogs, those puppies are leaving by eight weeks old. My puppies, they're like five or six months old most of the time, and even older. So you really need to be able to train them, and you need to be able to support your client. And on that same note, with the whole livestock thing, people think they should just be cheap, you know, well, you can't put that much work and effort and your education and your time and your trouble and all that into them and sell them cheap. And there's this big like, somebody posted this another breeder. This is a code of ethics breeder, and they were marketing that they sell affordable livestock, Guardian dogs. And I took that and I was like, You shouldn't be promoting affordable. Affordable should not be a point that a breeder is proud of. It's not that you're trying to make tons of money, but you're putting so much into them. If somebody's selling. Are affordable dogs. To me, that's the same as cheap dogs and cheap dogs. You have to cut corners. You can't you have to. And it's not always the same. They don't all do the same thing. Some people save money by not health testing their dogs, but maybe they do okay with the training part. Other people maybe have beautiful dogs, health tested, whatever, but they're not giving them the livestock training, because it's just too much work. You know, haven't taken it. I've had people, those particular breeders, point blank, tell me I showed her puppy culture, and she looked at that and she said, Ah, I don't need that. I can do that. No, you can't. Yeah, spend $100 and read a thing and just watch a few videos and learn some stuff. You know, if you think you're going to save money by going and getting a cheaper dog, you're probably going to end up running a corner somewhere. I mean, I get people all the time because I have my website, and then I have a Facebook group that had for marims. It's got about 2000 members. So I get people all the time coming to me with their problems. And I've actually do phone consultations too, and they bought a dog or two from somebody, and it didn't get the right training, and it's chasing everything and whatever. Or I had this one really sad story of this lady. She bought two dogs, and one of her dogs, her hips are just terrible, terrible, so bad. She's going to have total hip replacement. I asked to go back to the breeder and ask, yeah, I didn't, because I just knew they weren't going to do anything. She's going to spend probably $15,000 and she said, You know, I have the money to do it. I'm willing to do it. I love the dog. I'm going to do it, but she's going to spend $15,000 on a dog. She probably, I'm gonna guess she may be paid $1,500 for her, I don't know you know. So that saving money was not a bargain. That's what I say. Cheapest part of the dog is the purchase price, even if it's a higher purchase price, right, right? You would also mention that they aren't machines as well. Yeah, yeah, even with an excellent socialization and training and all that. They're still dogs, you know, they're still, you know, they're still gonna go through, especially as they go through the teenage stage. You know, that's where learning how to set up your environment really makes a difference. And a scene in arrangement, you know, if you can't have, if you have a puppy that you know is learned that chasing goats is fun, then you have to do some management. You know? I learned things like, okay, when you start feeding the goats, and the goats start running around and yelling and whatever, then the puppies get excited and they think, oh, let's chase. So instead, let's bring the dogs in and start feeding the dogs first, because I separate my dogs from my goats, because my goats eat dog food, so bring the dogs in and have them eating while the hay is being thrown. My son feeds the the goats, and he drives around with the mule, and, you know, feeds the goats. You know, goats yell and scream and act like nuts when they know it's feeding time, and they do like, if you turn on the mule, we account, you know, the Kawasaki mule to ATV. You turn it on, the goats start yelling.
Chrissy 33:04
Talk about, talking about creating an association right there.
Speaker 1 33:08
Yeah, they do like, it doesn't matter what time of day is. As soon as it turns on, the goats are like, so let the let the dogs eat while the goats are getting fed. And then by the time, you know, everything settled down and let the dogs back out, they're like, Okay, we'll just go, let's go settle back to back to work, you know, so things like,
Chrissy 33:31
so what's the difference between a livestock Guardian dog as a companion dog versus a working dog? How do you how do you approach that differently?
Speaker 1 33:39
For a really long time I would not sell a puppy as a companion. Like I said, most, most people in the marimba world don't believe you should, which is was always odd to me, because people with Pyrenees and different breeds always sold them as companions. But the marema people decided that they couldn't be pets, and so I drank the Kool Aid, and I believed it, and I stuck to that. I turned away a lot of people, but I started, you know, thinking about it, and as my experience as a groomer, and with having a lot of different breeds and knowing different breeds, I started thinking, you know, there's a lot of breeds that can be challenging pets, not just livestock Guardian dogs, some of the breeds that are very popular as pets are the most challenging. I think I would never have a border collie as a pet. As beautiful as they are. Herding dogs are, you know, they need. And like I said, I had a Yorkie. I would not want another Yorkie. I'd have, you know, because challenges. So at some point, I decided I started softening on that, and I placed a couple of dogs as pets, and they did fantastically. A couple people bought them as pet or bought them as working dogs, but then they sold their farm, and they just turned into pets. And then this dog, Titus, my daughter, got married in 2020 and I gave her and her husband one of our puppies as a pet. And they lived at Camp Pendleton Marine housing. He did fantastic. He came back to us when he was close to two because they were moving to North Carolina. He became my house pet. So the difference is, there's still a livestock Guardian dog, but they're just guarding people instead of livestock. They're guarding you know? And it's funny, because there's this one particular person who really strongly, strongly believes that livestock Guardian dogs should not be pets. She even, she even says that livestock Guardian dogs are one class of dogs, and every other dog in the world is in the companion dog category, which is garbage. That's not true. We have all different types of working dogs. You know, livestock, gardening dogs are just one type of working dog. But she says that, and we when we were close, she came here to visit a few times, and she spent time with Titus, and she said to me, this dog has everything he needs. I can see he's happy he's not missing anything. And I can see why people would want to miss pets. The difference is it has to be somebody that understands the breed. You're not going to just have people walking into your house if you have a livestock guarding dog, because they some of them are more friendly than others. How they're socialized makes a difference. Titus was heavily socialized. My daughter took him to the dog park. She took him on walks. She had friends who would bring their dogs over, so he was socialized from the time he was young, to be used to that, I think if he had been raised here on my farm and been out, you know, with the livestock, because, like, I socialize my puppies a lot with people, but as they start getting older, I don't allow visitors into my pastures. I don't allow people I don't know, because I don't want my dogs to be overly friendly with people. There was a goat theft problem here a while back, and so I just don't want to risk it. So if he'd been raised a little differently, he might not be quite that way. But understanding your dog, understanding that they're still going to be protective nature, they might like visitors, but like if people come here, I have this little fence, this little x pen fence. It's only two feet tall, but he won't jump over it, and I put him behind the fence when visitors first arrive. And then once I know, if I can tell that he's comfortable and happy, then I'll let him out. But if not, I leave him. It's like a it's like a safe zone. You know, people will say, Well, how do I get my livestock Guardian dog to accept visitors in my home? And I'm like, well, they don't necessarily have to. Yeah, there's things you might be able to do to make that easier, but it's not a given rule that people have to pet your dog. You know, your dog's not comfortable with it. Make it where your dog has a place they can be where nobody's going to get hurt. You know, because I'm very I don't want people getting hurt, and I don't want my dog being put into a position working dog or companion, where they ever feel like they might have to bite somebody. You know, they're not as biddable as a border collie or something. They're not as they do respond very, very well to positive reinforcement, but they're not gonna, do you know all the tricks, and although I have one of my clients who her daughter's teaching the her marimbas to jump over little jumps, it's so cute. Okay, he said that the dogs are not that into it, but they do it just because they love her. They're human. They're jumping over the jumps, and the dogs are following.
Chrissy 38:20
Jeez. Yeah. So it's a matter of, like, looking for the right family who knows what to expect and knows how to work with a dog with those genetics and realization. Yeah.
Kim 38:32
So I always heard this thing that well, and this could be for a companion or a working dog, but especially for a companion, that well, if don't ever sell it to anybody or let anybody have it, if they don't at least have experience like experience with livestock Guardian dogs is best, or at least experience with other large dogs. You know, well, the first dog that I ever willingly and knowingly sold a companion dog to, she came to me, and she had a seven acres, and she had chickens, but she did not want the dog for a guardian dog. She wanted it as a pet for her daughter, and it was going to be in the house. It was going to be her daughter's pet. She just wanted a light. She wanted a marimba, because she wanted a dog that wouldn't chase the chickens if it was outside, but it was going to be inside. She had never owned a dog in her life, and at first I was like, No, I don't sell his pets anyway. And I this is not a good idea, but she just kept coming back to me, and she had such a well thought out plan. She's like, I'm going to take her to puppy classes, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that, and I've read this book and that book, if we need to, well, she had like, contingencies. Oh, good, we could do this type of training and this type of training and whatever. And I finally was like, okay, she's really done her research and and so I sold her the dog, and she probably asked me more questions than any puppy owner ever she would say, what about this? And she's doing this, and how do I handle that? And how, you know, crate training. I'm like, I haven't crate trained to marimba. I'm not really. And she took her to puppy classes, and she did all that. When that dog was 13 months old. She had her AKC good citizenship, and then she got certified as a therapy dog. She takes her there, you know, hospitals and nursing homes. I learned from that I won't just automatically say no to some and, I mean, somebody told me I'm going to shock it, and I'm going to, you know, whatever the No. But if they're, if they don't have the experience, but they're very willing to learn and listen, that's what matters. Yeah, yeah. I always tell my clients to recommend them to take the Karen Pryor Foundations Program. I don't require it, but I highly encourage it. The ones who are the most successful with the dogs are the ones who do it, and they always thank me, you know, having just a basic understanding of dog training and dog behavior and things like that,
Chrissy 40:58
yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So is there anything that's weighing on your mind, or any negative wisdom that you would like to share?
Kim 41:05
Nugget of wisdom? I would say something I recently thought about, and I haven't really said it around, but I would say where you get your dog is the single most important factor to contributing to how that is all going to go, how it's going to turn out, you know, good or bad, or even if there's problems, everything's not always going to be perfect. I'm not always going to, every dog's not going to be perfect. But if there's problems, you know, I have a two year health guarantee, and I, I recently had to, had to, you know, had a dog, and somebody had to bring it back. It mean, it happens, you know, like so things like that. Most breeders are like, no, no. Either they don't have it or they make it so hard that, you know, it's impossible, training, health, support, all that, if you pick the wrong dog, it's just going to be harder. A really great trainer can help a lot, but a really get great trainer will not ever be able to completely make up for a bad puppy hood, you know, or bad genetics, or bad health, or whatever. You know, a puppy that didn't write socialization. You could take a puppy that didn't get socialized with livestock and buy it at four months old. I don't care what trainer you take it to, it will never be the dog that was. I got puppies out there now that are six weeks old, and they're out there with my goats, and they've been out there for a while, you know, they're going to be different puppies than somebody else's puppies who were raised on their patio. You know? Yeah,
Chrissy 42:27
I bet those six week, six week old puppies are really cute.
Speaker 1 42:33
Those puppies are so adorable, they're just like fluff balls.
Chrissy 42:37
Oh yeah. So if people are interested in learning more about maramus or livestock Guardian dogs, or, you know, adding one to their home, or reaching out to you. What's the best way that they can do that?
Kim 42:50
And they can contact me through my website. Actually have two websites. My original website is Prancing Pony farm.com but I recently made a second one. I'm splitting the goats and the dogs. So it's Prancing Pony marimas. So either one or if they just type in Prancing Pony farm, they will probably find me, because it usually comes up really quickly. I have, you know, the two websites. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, I'm trying to build that more. Haven't done a lot on it, but I'm trying to and then Pinterest, and that's how we met online course. And membership for you know, livestock Guardian dogs and I just recently decided I'm going to make a free membership first, so that that's my first step. It's like I can kind of learn as I go. So I'll probably be launching that in the next week or so, hopefully so. And it's going to be dog and goat, you know, so it'll have training stuff and health and care and whatever, and a discussion kind of like Facebook, but without having to deal with Facebook,
Chrissy 43:54
okay, yeah, well, we'll put the we'll put those links in the show notes for people. They can, they can find them in the show notes. All right. Kim, well, thank you for being here and talking about Guardian dogs and all the wonderful things that you're doing to get you know good, ethical breeding out there to have dogs that people can love and make it part of their livelihood as well, right?
Speaker 1 44:18
Yep, yep. You're welcome. Thank you.
Chrissy 44:21
I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope you are enjoying the special The Dogs of our lives, summer working dog series. I'd be so grateful if you could share with other dog and animal lovers so I can continue to spread the good word about kind, ethical dog guardianship on many different levels.
