As of the 1990s, it was estimated that over 50% of sheep ranchers in the western United States use LGDs – or Livestock Guardian Dogs – as part of their management program. We’ve read that much of what they knew to do with their dogs was as the result of work done by Ray and Lorna Coppinger.

One supposes that Ray’s twelve year mushing career that saw him evolve from a five dog to a sixteen dog team, win many races on the northeast circuit, and breed his own strain of responsive sled dogs might count as his first professional study of dogs. It was his and Lorna’s work studying LGDs, however, that interests us.

In 1976, the Coppingers founded the Livestock Guarding Dog Project at Hampshire College where Ray is a professor emeritus of biology. The Coppingers and associates imported traditional LGD breeds and leased them to farms and ranches throughout America. They kept detailed records to determine the causes and failure of success, information that helped identify the types of behaviors, experiences, and training necessary for successful livestock guardian dogs. Their studies, for instance, helped determine that the critical period for bonding livestock guardian dogs with the animals they’ll be guarding is between 4 to 16 weeks of age. After this time, the Coppingers felt, social bonds can’t usually be formed. and that if the dog doesn’t bond to livestock before he or she is 4 months old, it probably won’t happen. That said, they also found that 80% of dogs that fail in their first placement can be successful in a second setting. It was the Coppingers who reintroduced LGDs to European countries that had lost the old tradition, and also to Argentina and Nambia where such dogs had never been used before.

We should add that Ray Coppinger has his detractors who feel he has put too much emphasis on imprinting, and the suggestion that bonding is compromised if not done before 16 weeks, or that an LGD won’t guard any animal it hasn’t been exposed to when young. We’re asking LGD owners to share what they think about this?

Image:An Australian livestock guardian dog protecting its flock of sheep by Andy Fitzsimon from Brisbane, Australia – protector of the sheep, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3401264