$400 for the house --- $100 for the piano.
" National menace": street dogs in Santiago attack a pedestrian after cornering him against the security barricades in front of La Moneda [the building that houses the offices of the president of Chile].
Uno keeps everything under control. All photos courtesy of Laura Hicks: used with permission. [Click on photos for a larger view.]
Oldest son Dustin walks behind as Kat drives a group of ewes from one pasture to the next:
Both Laura and Dustin ran dogs at the 9th Annual Upper Midwest Stockdog Challenge at Jordan, Minnesota in late July. The two of them also helped with set out. Dustin did very well in the Novice classes with Kat:
In this photo, Laura and Zac are working to shed a group of farm-flock ewes --- not the same as shedding range sheep:
Laura and Zac were just three points behind leaders Alasdair MacRae and Star in the first round of Open.
Laura, thanks again for sharing these great photos, and good luck in the National Sheepdog Finals in Gettysburg! Yeah, I think you should make the trip ;~)
Zac watches another dog at work on the L & M Ranch, South Dakota. All photos courtesy of Laura Hicks: used with permission. [Click on photos for a larger view.]
Reece, a friend's dog, works the larger flock for the first time, and does a terrific job. The big white dog tagging along is a livestock guardian dog [LGD] that lives with the sheep in order to protect them from coyotes, mountain lions and stray dogs.
"Gentle when stroked, fierce when provoked": Simba is one of the L & M Ranch LGDs. He is an Akbash/Great Pyrenees cross:
Whose colt? I had to post this photo to try to remind myself why I am not moving to South Dakota immediately. [Hint: it's that cold, white stuff.] A few of the L & M Ranch quarter horses:
God's country: Zac brings in the girls on the L & M ranch in South Dakota. All photos courtesy of Laura Hicks; used with permission. [Click on the photos for a larger view.]
Mike and Laura Hicks own the L & M Ranch in the southwestern part of South Dakota, not far from Badlands National Park. Mike and Laura, along with their sons Dustin and Brady, run a commercial cow/calf operation and raise sheep and good ranch horses. They raise good dogs, too.
Laura grew up with Australian shepherds, but she and Mike use border collies on their ranch. Laura writes: "The dogs are invaluable in helping gather pastures in the fall. They are great about sweeping the tree filled draws. It takes about half the riders it used to with the dogs helping now. The dogs are used in almost every aspect of the place now." She says, "If we could figure out how to teach them to drive a staple or stretch wire, we might get them more involved in fencing, too. As it is now, they prefer to supervise."
Here are a few members of the hard-working L & M Ranch crew. First is Laura's Zac, who made the double lift final at Meeker and placed 6th in the double lift at this year's National Cattledog Finals in Torrington, Wyoming. Zac is cooling down after helping to move some bulls:
Homebred Jag also works both sheep and cattle:
Intense Uno keeps an eye on the stock:
This photo of Zac and Laura was taken at the Meeker Classic Sheepdog Championship in Colorado. Laura calls Zac an assertive, biddable dog, fearless "but not stupid," who "came out of the womb knowing he’s capable of moving anything." Zac won the Best Drive award at Meeker in 2006, and Laura received the Shining Star Award. They are entered at Meeker again this year.
Soldier Hollow, 2005 -- another win for Bev Lambert and Pippa. Photo by Denise Wall: used with permission.
Soldier Hollow is two weeks away, and this year's National Sheepdog Finals are just around the corner, too: they'll be held at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania September 18 - 26. The trial should be a great one. Top 150 dogs qualify.
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In the UK, a parent is furious that nothing can be done about the dog that attacked her child:
A Merseyside police spokesman said there were a number of different offences covered by dangerous dog legislation, but none applied in this case.The dog could be seized by police if it was one of four officially “dangerous” breeds – American pit bull, Japanese tosa, fila Brasiliero or dogo Argentino.
For any other breed the attack must happen in public or be one of a number of incidents involving the same animal for action to be taken.
The police spokesman said this attack was not in a public place and was the first incident involving the shih-tzu.Last year doctors at Alder Hey’s A&E department said they were treating the equivalent of a child a day for injuries caused by dog attacks, with one in five needing further treatment on more serious wounds.
"Our bad: two Rottweilers, actually, and they were malnourished and abused. Whatever." Top-notch reporting there, WTKR.The tallies of attacks, attacks on children, attacks on adults, fatalities, and maimings on the above data sheet must be evaluated in three different contexts. The first pertains to breed-specific characteristic behavior, the second to bite frequency as opposed to the frequency of severe injuries, and the third to degree of relative risk.
Dog bite statistics are not really statistics, and they do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite. Invariably the numbers will show that dogs from popular large breeds are a problem. This should be expected, because big dogs can physically do more damage if they do bite.
Of the breeds most often involved in incidents of sufficient severity to be listed, pit bull terriers are noteworthy for attacking adults almost as frequently as children. Numbers again: Clifton doesn’t know how often pit bulls bite children or how frequently they bite adults. He has no idea how often they bite at all. No one does. This is a very rare pattern […] What pattern? Without knowing anything about a biting dog’s health, care or condition, its quality of ownership, victim behavior and so forth, there are no patterns. Captain Arthur Haggerty, a well-known dog trainer, wrote that in cases where a pit bull bites, the owner almost always has a criminal record. That might be a pattern worth investigating. Pit bulls seem to differ behaviorally from other dogs in having far less inhibition about attacking people who are larger than they are. Which pit bulls? Out of the country’s three million or more pit bulls, which ones “differ behaviorally”? Mr. Clifton, meet Mr. Gladwell. Once again, Clifton refuses to acknowledge that other factors may be involved when a pit bull bites: abuse, starvation, life on a chain. They are also notorious for attacking seemingly without warning, “Notorious?” According to whom? Barring health problems and/or abuse, all dogs exhibit a pattern of negative or abnormal behavior before a bite. a tendency exacerbated by the custom of docking pit bulls' tails so that warning signals are not easily recognized. Where on earth is it “the custom” to dock pit bulls’ tails? Seriously. Is there any substantiating evidence for this statement? Because no one docks pit bulls’ tails. Ears, sometimes --- tails, never [unless the tail is injured]. Thus the adult victim of a pit bull attack may have had little or no opportunity to read the warning signals that would avert an attack from any other dog. How many of the pit bulls involved in this list of attacks had docked tails? “We have no idea”? I thought so.
Rottweilers […] seem to show up disproportionately often in the mauling, killing, and maiming statistics simply because they are both quite popular and very powerful[...] A “large, popular breed,” in other words --- as opposed to those notorious pit bulls with their rare behavioral patterns.
German shepherds are herding dogs, bred for generations to guide and protect sheep. Please. German shepherds are show and companion dogs, and no, they have not been bred for generations to work sheep. For the last century they have been bred for conformation; for police work and protection sports; and to be pets. Most modern GSDs have as much “herding instinct” as a bulldog, and based on what I’ve seen at AKC “herding trials,” as much talent on stock. In modern society, they are among the dogs of choice for families with small children because of their extremely strong protective instinct. How does he know? They have three distinctively different kinds of bite [I can’t believe I’m reading this]: the guiding nip, which is gentle and does not break the skin; the grab-and-drag, to pull a puppy or lamb or child away from danger, which is as gentle as emergency circumstances allow; and the reactive bite, usually in defense of territory, a child, or someone else the dog is inclined to guard. The reactive bite usually comes only after many warning barks, growls, and other exhibitions intended to avert a conflict. When it does come, it is typically accompanied by a frontal leap for the wrist or throat. Unbelievable. There is not a shred of evidence for these statements, and I’m speaking 1) as a former owner of both American-bred and Schutzhund-bred German shepherds, and 2) as one with a fair amount of literature in my possession relating to this breed. If German shepherds are bred for any sort of bite, it’s the full-mouthed protection-sport bite, and that same type of bite is admired by the relatively tiny but dedicated group of GSD boundary-style herding enthusiasts here and in Germany. “Three distinctively different kinds of bite”? I thought I’d seen it all after reading a few years’ worth of AKC Gazette breed columns [“Collies must have an oblique eye set in order to scan the horizon for sheep”], and then something like this comes along. The “three different bites” concept has nothing to do with the millions of GSDs in North America and even less to do with the realities of stockwork. Seriously, where did this “three distinctive bites” business come from? Is it from the Gazette? Enlighten us. Because it sounds as if it was made up out of whole cloth.
Because German shepherds often use the guiding nip and the grab-and-drag with children, who sometimes misread the dogs' intentions and pull away in panic, they are involved in biting incidents at almost twice the rate that their numbers alone would predict: approximately 28% of all bite cases, according to a recent five-year compilation of Minneapolis animal control data. Yet none of the Minneapolis bites by German shepherds involved a serious injury: hurting someone is almost never the dogs' intent.
In the German shepherd mauling, killing, and maiming cases I have recorded, there have almost always been circumstances of duress: the dog was deranged from being kept alone on a chain for prolonged periods without human contract, was starving, was otherwise severely abused, was protecting puppies, or was part of a pack including other dangerous dogs. None of the German shepherd attacks have involved predatory behavior on the part of an otherwise healthy dog.
Temperament is not the issue, nor is it even relevant. What is relevant is actuarial risk. If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed--and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price.
