I have often read about the importance of protecting our alpacas because they have no natural defenses against predators. We don't seem to have a bear, mountain lion, or other wild predator concerns where we live, but I was always concerned about neighborhood dogs wondering over and harming our alpacas. I looked into a llama, but felt other than size, they did not have any other advantage in terms of defenses than our alpacas. Most llama people say llamas can help guard, but are not meant to be the sole defense system.
With that in mind, I decided a livestock guardian dog would be best for us. I joined the Maremmma list and Great Pyrenees list in order to learn more about these dogs. I let a fellow alpaca breeder know about my interest, because she has been so happy with her two Great Pyrenees guardians. She put me in contact with another breeder who is part of a non profit group that evaluates and places trained guardian dogs. I contacted them and they felt they had just the dog. He was two years old and had been under their care for approximately a year. He was an Anatolian/Great Pyrenees cross. He was currently living with goats and doing a fine job of taking care of them. I decided this would be an ideal dog and made arrangements to bring him to my farm. He was slowly introduced to the alpaca group and had his own place for eating so the alpacas could not bother him while he ate. We watched him carefully over several days. He did not chase them or show any signs of aggression. By midweek, he was out with the herd and moving from my female paddock to my male paddock as he saw fit.
After he had lived with us for just over a week, we found our rooster dead one morning in the empty paddock, where our guardian dog mostly hung out because he could easily view both the male and female paddocks from. We were upset and concerned, but were not certain the rooster was killed by the dog, perhaps he even scared the predator away that killed the rooster.
Two days later, I heard screaming coming from my barn area. I ran out to find the dog attacking one of our alpacas, while he screamed and tried to run from him. I called the dog's name. He stopped, turned, and came running to me wagging his tail. I quickly secured him in our barn's tack room. Then I ran out to assess the damage done to our alpaca, Speed Racer. Initially, I saw several areas that were bleeding, but the did not appear to be bleeding much so I was hopeful that the damage was minimal. I quickly put a call into our vet and swabbed the bleeding areas with a beta dyne mixture. What concerned me most was Speed was just lying there and would not get up. The vet arrived and we moved Speed into the barn aisle. He did get up on his own. We began shearing away the fleece and that is when we began to realize just how badly he was hurt. His whole left leg was bit and chewed up so severely, there was no way to ascertain just how many times he had been bit. He had large, deep open puncture wounds on the inside and outside of the thigh. Our vet felt that these would be fatal and he would loose all the skin inside his leg and die. His skin was already within hours pulling away from the body and feeling "crinkly" to the touch. I asked her to do her best and that I would too.
We made a small pen for Speed in the aisle and in the stall. We covered it with blankets, which we change many times a day. His wounds are flushed several times a day. Medications are applied into the punctures and on top of the abraded skin. Fly spray is applied liberally and Speed is hand walked through out the day because we can not allow him to lie on the bare ground and get dirt into his open wounds. He also receives multiple injections for pain and antibiotics to ward off infection. As of this writing it has been 13 days since Speed's attack. He is still alive and the vet is more optimistic about his recovery, but feels it will be a lengthy recovery. He has had to have 3 procedures where she has had to cut away the dying tissue. She has been out to see him 5 times and will continue to see him for a while longer at least one to two times a week.
The lessons I have learned are that if we ever decide to add an alpaca guarding dog again, it will have to meet the following criteria
1. Be a puppy under 12 weeks of age.
2. Been raised with alpacas at an alpaca farm.
3. Be a purebred livestock guardian dog.
Below are pictures of the injuries that Speed Racer endured. This attack occurred in less than 20 minutes. I am certain of that because the alpacas had slept inside a barn stall while the dog was outside of the barn stall and I had just let them out 20 minutes before I heard the commotion.
Warning!
The following pictures are graphic.
The first two photos were taken the day of the attack. The third picture is taken of the inside of the leg two weeks later.
