Tonight, as I powered through my chores, I saw a sight that brought me right to a stop. A seven-month-old male pup who had only been in the field he was in for a couple of hours was standing down a herd of easily thirty elk – all by himself!!! Watching him do this just took my breath away. You’d think that after 250+ Maremmas over the last few years, I would have seen it all. Not so, as tonight was amazing. Here’s the backstory.
Our weather in Southern Oregon is generally mild, but today was a mixed bag of tricks with sunshine followed by snow (yuck!) followed by moments of calm. My outside late-in-the-day chores take me about three hours on a good day; today was not a good day, from that standpoint, anyway.
Earlier in the day, I had moved Sarika, my one remaining breeding female, into the barn so that she was ready to head to the vet in the morning to be spayed, thus ending my run as a breeder of Maremmas. That is a story for a different day.
In order to move Sarika, I had to relocate twelve other Maremmas. Two of the relocated young dogs were Lupine with Sage, his partner for now.
On this ranch, there are approximately thirty Maremmas, varying in age from nine years to seven months. The young dogs are just headed into the age that I prefer to place my dogs. Active training goes on with the young dogs daily. Rather than allow them to form firm partnerships with dogs of a similar age, I move them around a lot and pair them with a variety of pups the same age or patient adult dogs. So, these young guys never know what I am going to do with them on any given day. Yes! Keeps them on their toes and up for new challenges and adventures!
This is not the first time Lupine has been a star. The blog post below shows him, with his brother, in their first minutes with
The Language of Animals - New Home, New Sheep - Katie S.: https://www.bensonmaremmas.com/post/the-language-of-animals-new-home-new-sheep
No Illusions: