01/11/2026
Thanks for this great post on a study of Livestock Guardian Dogs. A good article to read.
When wolves returned to the American West in the 1990s and grizzly bears spread back across more of their old territory, the dogs that ranchers had used for decades to guard their sheep suddenly found themselves outgunned.
For generations, western sheep producers had relied on big white livestock guardian dogs, mostly Great Pyrenees, Akbash, Maremmas, and crosses of the three. Raised in the pens from puppyhood so they bonded tightly to the woollies, those dogs were built to run off thirty-pound coyotes and stray neighborhood dogs. Facing a hundred-pound gray wolf backed by a pack, or a mature grizzly coming through the timber after dark, was a different fight. Between 1995 and 2017 in Idaho alone, wolves killed 50 livestock guardian dogs and left nearly 40 more mauled.
To see whether tougher bloodlines could hold the line, research biologist Julie Young of the USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center looked overseas to rugged mountain regions where herders had never stopped dealing with wolves and bears. She settled on three Old World working breeds: the kangal from Turkey, the karakachan from Bulgaria, and the cão de gado transmontano from Portugal.
All three breeds can top 140 pounds, putting them on equal footing with a mature wolf. Young selected them because they had been bred for centuries to confront heavy predators without backing down, while still staying gentle enough around human hikers on public grazing allotments. In their home countries, Young noted, these dogs were known to keep right on guarding their flocks even after surviving a wolf attack.
Between 2012 and 2016, Young’s team imported roughly 120 puppies at a cost of about $500 apiece, including the flights, and placed them in working trios with sheep outfits across Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, and Washington. Utah State University graduate researcher Daniel Kinka then spent summers trailing the flocks across open mountain range, outfitting the dogs with GPS collars, setting out remote cameras, and logging hours of field observation.
Because catching a live wolf attack in the middle of a national forest is nearly impossible to time, the researchers staged their own encounters. Across 540 field trials involving 80 working dogs, the team planted life-size decoys of a gray wolf or a harmless mule deer near the grazing sheep to see how each breed responded.
The three European breeds each showed their own habits on the mountain. The Turkish kangals were the boldest investigators, walking straight out to confront the fake wolf. The shaggy Bulgarian karakachans preferred to hold their ground closer to the herd, watching the threat closely from a distance. The Portuguese transmontanos proved to be the sharpest judges of danger, reliably telling the difference between a predator decoy and a passing mule deer rather than wasting energy barking at native game.
The real scorecard, though, was dead sheep on the summer range. When Kinka and Young tallied up predator kills across the participating ranches, all three imported breeds beat the traditional American white dogs by a wide margin. Depending on the breed, flocks guarded by the European dogs suffered 61 to 95 percent fewer sheep losses than bands watched only by white guard dogs.
Each breed showed a different specialty on the range. Ranches running kangals saw big drops in sheep killed by mountain lions, black bears, and coyotes. The karakachans put the hardest dent in coyote kills, while the transmontanos brought down total sheep losses across the board without singling out one specific predator.
The cameras also caught a hidden shift in predator politics around the flocks. Whenever a band of thousands of sheep moved into a drainage accompanied by human herders and heavy guard dogs, the local wolves tended to steer clear of the area. With the wolves pushed out, however, resident coyotes immediately grew bolder and pressed in closer to the sheep, making a dog that still hammers coyotes just as valuable as one built to fight a wolf.
Not every imported puppy turned into a range legend. A few bonded too closely to the rancher’s family instead of staying out in the dirt with the ewes, one dog was hit and killed by a truck while escorting sheep across a highway, and another was badly chewed up on the range, most likely in a run-in with wolves.
By the end of the project, Young concluded that a western sheep outfit does not need to pick a single champion breed. Instead, the safest flock on wolf and bear range is watched by a mixed crew, pairing dogs that stay glued to the sheep with bolder patrol dogs that walk out to meet trouble in the trees.
Image is for illustration purposes only.
Source: Kinka & Young (2019), Rangeland Ecology & Management 72(6): 923-932 / Kinka & Young (2018), Rangeland Ecology & Management 71(4): 509-517 / Associated Press (2018) / High Country News.
The Lonley Camp.
