Dog pack

We have A LOT of dogs! Our two Boston Terrier mixes came from our neighborhood days. When we first got them as puppies they did great in our little neighborhood backyard. Eventually they started jumping our little chain link fence and we had to upgrade to a 6ft privacy fence, no problem, we planned on doing that anyways. When they started digging under the 6ft fence we put some ground blockers in so they couldn’t dig. THEN they started JUMPING the 6ft fence. At that point we called Jarid with Loyalty Canine Services LLC and he trained our two Boston mixes (Marshall and Andre). He did a great job and we didn’t have to worry about them anymore.

Jarid trains with E-collars and we are totally cool with that. The boys learned some simple commands with him that we continued training with at home. We chose Jarid after reading some good reviews and that he was based in Gloucester, where we were planning on moving to. We knew he would be local to our new location.

After we moved and purchased some more chickens from our favorite chicken man (and mentor) Jeffrey Klaiss with Fresh Start Farm, he very easily convinced us that we needed some Livestock Guardian Dogs to take care of flock and ever-growing inventory(?) collection(?) of farm animals. At that time, we purchased two unrelated puppies from him, a male and female that we plan on breeding in the future. These two puppies are now almost a year old and are known as Curtis and Missy. Side note: is anyone following the theme in names of the dogs yet??

As Curtis and Missy grew through their first year they have become more and more adventurous. We never thought that they would get to the road, or think about crossing it. Marshall and Andre are a different story – they have no car sense; they were in the road from the get-go. Jarid came over a couple of times to help us work with them on the new property to help them learn their boundaries here. Curtis and Missy never got formal training from Jarid, but they do have the same E-collars that Marshall and Andre wear.

These collars barely phase them. Now before they started getting to the road is when we got the E-collars and had our first consultation with Invisible Fence out of the Newport News location. Charlie came up and met with us; talked about the in ground system and the GPS system that they offer. Neither Stephen nor I were ready to put out that kind of money for the system and went ahead and got the E-collars for Curtis and Missy.

As Curtis and Missy started approaching a year old, Curtis became super wandery. At first, he was going over to the elementary school and we’d get calls in the morning when children were about to come to school. So we started kenneling him in the morning.

Next, we were having people call Stephen’s number a couple times a week, saying they have Curtis. Now, to be fair, most the time Curtis was still on our property – but on the side of the road. So he was a tornado watch, not a tornado warning. Until one night. Or should I say morning? One morning at 3am there was some loud banging on the doors. It’s the po-lice. My kids are too young to be brought home by the police. It’s Curtis. Curtis was brought home by the police because he was crossing the road at 3am. Coming home (sober) at 3am. Curtis lost his roaming privileges. He was been kenneled unless we are outside with close eyes on him. That is not his job. That is not his purpose in life.

We now have two more puppies that need good guidance and training from the older members of the pack. We need Missy and Curtis to be able to train them, with free range of the farm. They cannot train them if they are kenneled most the time. Especially if they are kenneled at night. The two new pups are Kimberly (Kimmy) and Calvin. 

I called Charlie with Invisible Fence the next day to start the process of getting the GPS System installed on the property. (Appointments and install times, this is not an immediate thing). We wanted the GPS System so our LGDs are still able to roam and chase off and predation threats, but not get across the road. At this point they should be restricted to behind the fence but have free range of all our acres.

GPS Systems do fail. But I hope it doesn’t ever fail with Curtis (or anyone else) on the wrong side of the road. All we can do is our best, and this is the absolute best system on the market. We are glad that our pups that we have worked hard training to protect our livestock and poultry investments are going to be free to roam the property once again.
I hope to be able to report back in a couple months or a few weeks that all is well and sound with our system and our pack of dogs. 

Invisible Fence
Loyalty Canine Services
​Fresh Start Farm
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