There Will Be Losses Blog, 4

By Wendy
A tearful dog owner called this morning having lost a lamb. The prime suspect is her young playful CMD male, although it isn’t iron clad. The farm has been lambing since January with no losses, but she had introduced a few brand new babies into the field and found one of them dead this morning.

We went through the case piece by piece, examining every detail, and then we talked through the training approach going forward… how to make sure it was the dog, and how to insure it doesn’t happen again.

There will be losses, even when people have been doing this awhile. She is a longtime rancher/CMD owner, and she has 3 other mature dogs who are not problems. The young dog is the son of one of her females.

When I lose even a chicken, I feel like closing the farm. It s tough! So I am careful not to make any decisions until a week goes by, my emotions settle, and I can work through what happened and make whatever changes need to be made so it doesn’t happen again. Working with animals has it’s sad days.