Benson Ranch Livestock Guardian Dog Training

01/08/2025

"A Resource Super Center" This is how a friend of mine described her barnyard, through the eyes of her mature, experienced, neutered male LGD, and asked asked me to write about this with an eye towards prevention. Indeed. Let's do that.

Think about your own relationship to your property, and then your yard, and then your house and your car, and then your favorite room in your house; your investment in the things you care about intensifies as it becomes smaller and more concentrated, right? What would you do to protect it if you felt your access to those things was threatened? What if someone, or something, such as event, made you think you might lose some of those things? Would you become edgy, distrustful, grumpy, worried, and on and on?

Children have little control over their lives, so they don't willingly share their toys until they come to understand that if they do, even more good things will show up including new, cool experiences.

Adults take control of their lives and go out into the world as they identify new things, such as physical things or experiences, that enrich their lives (resources); their resources become plentiful and spread out over a much larger area. This is a good thing, because if there are lots of good things spread out all over the place, guarding every little piece from the Bogeyman, real or imagined, becomes too much work and not worth it. Or, maybe not, given the learned history of the animal and the genetic programming that exists. But this is the right direction to go in pursuit of the best possible outcome in this situation.

How to control/influence resource guarding behavior in LGDs? Give them more resources, more control over those resources, and spread them all over the place! And what did my friend do in response to her good dog's new, grumpy behavior?

"The dogs and the goats all liked a certain stall in the barn, it was the only one with a sleeping platform and fans. So I made sleeping platforms for two other stalls and added another fan to one of those stalls as well. I also moved his food out of the barnyard into the pasture. Luckily we got two new baby goats at the same time, which I believe were a perfect distraction for him. So a combination of treating his illness, duplicating everyone’s favorite stall, new baby goats and slow supervised reintroduction, and we seem to be ok."

Excellent training responses and not a shock collar in sight! Shep never knew he had "made a mistake" because he didn't. It was a management error, a very common one and one that can be prevented if you understand the path you may be headed on in the way you live with your LGDs. The first place to look, if there is a behavior change in your dog, is to rule out any health issues. This is how it started with Shep, and because he didn't feel good he was less tolerant of a situation he had been fine with for years.

An additional thought is don't add resources that are not naturally occurring in the dog's environment, such as toys and bones, because in doing so you will create stress that does not need to be there. In an LGD's life, there is a place to sleep, to drink, gates and doorways to guard, etc. Make more of those and spread them around.

About the photo: Young Hannah wasn't hot, she was guarding the water trough. I gave her two water troughs, far apart; problem solved, and onto another adolescent behavior challenge!

01/08/2025

https://www.bensonmaremmas.com/post/what-is-the-1-dog-training-mistake

It isn't possible to actually, for sure, know what a dog is feeling. Assumptions are made based on the body language of the dog, and possibly the environmental circumstance, and this absolutely pulls from the person's learned history with dogs and other animals.

21/07/2025

"When we use behavior analysis vs behavior modification, we are committing to understanding a behavior before we attempt to change it." Written by Debbie Jacobs - Fearful Dogs - Instructor and much more.

When I started my training journey, my focus was to figure out how to change the behavior of my dogs as I felt I needed to, and the Karen Pryor Academy is where I started. I did, indeed, learn how to change the behavior of my dogs but I learned very little about why dogs do the things they do. Because of this, my dogs did things that I didn't expect or understand, which resulted in new behaviors I needed to change.

Several years later, I was very fortunate to travel to Florida to learn from the amazing trainer Steve Martin, and then Susan Friedman PhD., who rocked my whole world. Both of them use behavior analysis before considering behavior modification.

Now? I do a pretty good job of observing my dogs to figure out what they want and then make sure they get it in ways that work for both of us. This is what training looks like for me, most of the time; it is far less work, much less stressful for both me and my dogs, and is fast and sustainable.

I sincerely wish I had learned why behavior happens before the audacious insanity of thinking I had the right to just come along and change it.

When training clients and students reach out to me, they often want to know how to change a dog's behavior by stopping it; IE: How To. When I teach them why the behavior is happening, they have the tools to figure out how to change the dog's environment so that the dog's choice to change is his own. Funny how electronic "communication", tethers, dangle sticks, and such are never necessary. Liberating!!!!

19/07/2025

https://www.bensonmaremmas.com/post/how-i-feel-about-an-lgd-barking-at-new-livestock

Learn how to deal with an LGD barking at new livestock without using aversive training methods.

18/07/2025

I have a new training client who is very savvy about tech, and we all know I am not. He checked me out using Chat GPT, which is an AI resource in which you can ask questions. He told me about what he found, and then I took a look. I typed in "Cindy Benson dog trainer" and wow. It made me blush but it is also all true. Take a look if you are interested. For me, teaching and training are easy, while marketing well enough that people can find me is the challenge. As me of my very best self, I could not have come up with a description of what I do that was better.

15/07/2025

14/07/2025

This is Roo visiting with a four-day-old mini donkey foal; this is her first opportunity for contact with this brand new species. Roo is one of my two first foster dogs. She arrived on 7/1/24 all the way from Dallas, Texas. She is well-loved by her first foster mom and we stay in touch. Roo is a mix of 13 breeds, and is 78% LGD breeds. She is a sensitive, tender dog and in this video you can clearly see her nurturing side. What you can't see is this: When that foal runs, Roo is all kinds of dangerous. She gets a hard, fixed look in her eyes and becomes frenzied as she runs the fence lines and digs at the bottom of fences in an effort to tunnel under, something Roo can be good at doing.

Roo is a perfect example of the challenges owners face when they bring home "an LGD" who actually isn't one. Her genetic base (motor patterns) are who she is. It is just as reinforcing to Roo to lick the nose of this foal or run him down, mouth all over him if possible. She isn't being a "bad" dog; she is acting as nature programmed her to.

Roo is a manager, as LGDs are, and scans the sky for threats just as she is vigilant about any other possible threats such as the occasional deer or coyote. She doesn't want to be a couch dog, or not always, and she doesn't want to live as a guardian dog always, so finding her balance is tricky and it changes frequently - sometimes daily. I house her close to the hub of the ranch so that she has lots of human contact and the activity level is high, but move her into differing situations daily so that she has the opportunity to experience both her prey drive and guardian aspects. But, boy do I tune up the bottoms of fence lines that are adjacent to vulnerable animals such as Tigger - my granddaughter's name for this foal.

The dog is the expert; let the dog tell you what she needs and then adjust your goals for the dog accordingly, don't expect to change the dog through training if you are dealing with something as firmly true for the dog as motor pattern sequences. More about this soon.

Would you like to know how to train this way? Learn how to make informed training decisions; this course will show you how: https://www.livestockguardiandogcourses.com/courses/livestockguardiandogs

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12/07/2025

Here's an idea about keeping dogs cool.

11/07/2025

Solero Learns About My Car & Ramp

Solero is a dog with a trauma history, but even if this were not true, it is always my preference to set up a training opportunity in a way that the dog can ...

08/07/2025

Solero Greets Young Reid - Recovering from the Trauma of Being Tethered

In the opening photo, you will see Solero as he came to me. He was desperate to make a connection with me and lacked the social skills necessary to greet me ...

07/07/2025

Auggie, one of my rescue dogs, was ready to go to his new home - and that is a story for a different day, all smiles. Before I let a dog leave me, I have my vet check them for foxtails as well as overall health. She allows me to groom my dogs under sedation when I need to. While I was there with Auggie, I took a minute to record the grooming I like to do with my dogs given our environmental considerations. Have a look, and I welcome your questions.

02/06/2025

This quote crossed my path recently and it resonated with me - maybe it will for you too.