Working With The Maremmas
	We have got a great second dog, Koket, a young female.  She and Yasha are working together now.  Koket is fairly shy compared to Yasha so they make a good team.  Koket was born in April 2004 and we got her in Dec 2004.  As soon as she arrived you could see that Yasha matured as he now had a younger dog to try and control.  The great thing is that now he can aim his playfulness at another dog where it belongs.  She was here for about a month when we tried letting them run loose together on the farm and so far it has worked pretty well. Even though she is young she is pretty serious about her work.  She is the first one to bark and go check out stuff. Yasha is there to protect her in case she ever does run into a coyote. They are both excellent with the alpacas, people and the kids. Enjoy the pictures and I'll try and report more as time permits Richard MacKinnon AlpacaStation.com

Yasha

Discovering the Maremma

	While on our visits of Alpaca ranches we noticed a good percentage were using a breed of dog unfamiliar to us.  It was the Maremma.  What we noticed about all the Maremmas we met (approximately 10) was that they were very friendly with us and our children.  They were large but not overly so.  They lived fulltime with the herd.  They did a nice job of deterring neighbor dogs without being overly aggressive.  And in neutral territory they interacted well with neighbor dogs.  The various Maremma owners we met really liked them and told us stories of how they kept all predators away from the Alpacas.  Bears, coyotes, eagles, stray dogs etc.   After doing some more research we decided that when we settled down on our farm that the Maremma was the dog for us.  I have grown up with pet dogs but never had one of my own since I left home when I was 18.  Since that time I have lived in towns and cities and been “busy”, didn’t want to keep a dog in those situations.  I looked forward to having a dog again!  Especially a working dog.  I think that a dog that works with you is the most satisfied and content dog.   Maremmas are good for protecting any livestock and do well with house pets and children.  After the Maremma learns about who he is living with, be it humans, sheep, pet dogs, chickens or alpacas, he will “adopt” them all to protect.  When introducing a Maremma to a new animal you need to take care and do a very supervised introduction.  Especially with cats.     Some Maremmas end up with owners who were not well informed on the breed and cannot supply them with an adequate environment and they end up in shelters.  Such Maremmas can be “rescued” and retrained to protect livestock.   It will take time and patience but it can work.   The Breed   The breed has definite traits for guarding but like any type of animal each dog will be different and have his own personality.  Some will bark a lot, some will bark just enough, etc.  Young Maremmas are very playful.  They like to play aggressively and like to nip.  You need to keep them supplied with large bones to alleviate their need to nip or chew.  During the teenage months (12 -20 months) are the most challenging.  You need to supervise them very closely, since by this time they have bonded with your livestock and now will want play with them.  With our dog at 15 months we had to tie him when we are not with him.  He has such a great personality that he accepts being tied with no problems.  And we hate to keep him tied but there is no other alternative at this point until he understands playing with alpacas is not acceptable.  You should not expect your Maremma to be a true guard dog until two years of age.  Before that he may look and bark and growl like an adult but he may not know how to properly defend himself.    A Maremma will use the least force necessary to deter predators.  This is pretty cool.  The test of a successful guardian dog is not the number of dead predators he leaves but the lack of dead livestock.    Firstly, just the presence of the large dog will eliminate most threats.  The Maremma has a deep bass-booming bark that is his first line of deterrence.  It lets all within considerable distance know that a large dog lives there.  He will also mark his territorial boundaries with urine.  Secondly the Maremma is a fast, agile and intelligent dog.  He can quickly get to the predator and drive him away.   Lastly, if a fight is necessary the Maremma has scissor-like teeth and is a very efficient killer.  But I stress the Maremma is not a killer at heart, he is a protector.  It’s very easy to tell if you met one.   Intelligence is probably the Maremma’s greatest asset.  He can think through situations for himself.  He will not be drawn away from his herd by a coyote that wants to lead him astray so a pack can get your livestock.  On the contrary, the Maremma actually has a technique that he will employ when he wishes to draw a coyote into striking distance.  The Maremma has been observed running from a predator with his tail between his legs and then hiding amongst the sheep until the coyote comes close enough that the dog can strike with surprise on his side.   Maremmas have been selectively bred for centuries in the mountains of Italy to guard sheep from wolves.  They have a dense coat that allows the dog to thrive in the harshest weather.  They are white so they will not be mistaken for a wolf or coyote.  They move very slowly and predictably amongst the livestock and either be submissive or run away from an aggressive sheep or alpaca.  They were first imported into North America in the 1970s.  They are also known as an Italian Sheepdog or  Italian Wolf dog.  Many mountain villages have even until this day bred their own version of a sheep dog.  It was two of these subtypes that were formalized into a standard breed in 1958 by combining the larger Abruzzese from the Abruzzi mountains with the finer Maremmano from the Tuscan lowland of Maremma,  to produce the standard breed named Maremmano-Abruzzese.  Which is commonly referred to now (outside of Italy anyway) as simply the Maremma.     Yasha   We were fortunate enough to locate a breeder  and we acquired an eleven month old male puppy we named Yasha (means “To Save”).  Yasha was kept with sheep up till that point.  He is developing into a really nice dog for us.  We will acquire another  Maremma puppy to be a companion for Yasha  after Yasha matures.     It is best to get a Maremma when they are eight weeks old and immediately start keeping him close to your livestock so a strong bond will form.  (As I become better informed on this topic I will post more information, we did not go through this process with Yasha)   The Maremma is a very special breed, unlike all other dogs I’ve known.  Yasha is at the same time a big fierce protector and a sensitive friend.  When we first brought him home he was inside the truck cap on the back of my pickup.  He was about 75lbs and he was very scared to be away from home.  He looked like a full grown dog but he was still very much a puppy.  He did not want to get out of the truck.   He would ball himself up in the corner and look at me with frightened eyes.  Even urinating sometimes from fright.   So I parked the truck in the barn with the alpacas.  He was so quiet they didn’t realize he was there for over 24 hours.  The second day he still didn’t want to come out so I left him in the truck, I didn’t want to break his will and spirit.  But the alpacas had noticed him by that point and would not go in the barn for the night.  I parked the truck outside.  On the beginning of the third day I went out at dawn to see if Yasha would want out.  Sure enough he did and for good reason.  He did not defecate in the truck, he had held himself for over two days and now wanted to hit the field bad!  After that we went for a long walk around the perimeter of the fields he is to protect and he stayed with me off-leash.  He has been progressing since and doing very well.  The alpacas have accepted him and he now believes he is one of the herd as he will dine on hay and grain with the alpacas from time to time!  He sleeps in the barn with the animals at night.  We kept him in a large pen away from the alpacas for a couple days until each was accustomed to the other.  And then kept him separate at night for a couple of weeks until we were confident there would be no problems with him being amongst the alpacas loose at night.  When he is mature we will allow him to roam outside at night and stake out his full territory.   Yasha the Thinker and the Pen   The pen built for Yasha in the Alpaca barn looked pretty good. It was assembled with some sturdy portable cow pens and chainlink fencing. But Yasha basically walked in and walked right through an opening in 10 seconds   Two more versions came and went which he escaped from very quickly in new ways.   Then some final fixes were made and we watched him. He stood in the pen and just scanned around with his eyes. We saw him spy some bags of grain which were close to a corner, he was going to climb up on those and get out so we moved them   He scanned for a couple of minutes more, figured he couldn't get out and lied down.     Richard MacKinnon AlpacaStation.com