The Use of Eurasian Dogs to Protect Sheep from Predators in North America: A Summary of Research at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station

The authors thank the sheep producers who cooperated in the study. R. Harman, R. VanHorn, S. Ecret, K. Havelock, J. Geiser, W. Bowers, G. Pendleton, D. Johnson, and C. Schwartz helped with the care and evaluation of the dogs. In the search for methods to reduce coyote (Canis latrans) predation on sheep, livestock guarding dogs have been found to be a relatively successful technique in a variety of conditions including open rangeland (Green and Woodruff in press) and fenced pastures (Linhart et al. 1979, McGrew and Bakesley 1982, Pfeifer and Goos 1982, Green et al. In Press a). Eurasian dogs (Coppinger and Coppinger 1980b) and mongrel dogs (Black 1981) reared from puppyhood with sheep become attentive to the flock, generally remain with sheep, and subsequently help to reduce predation (Coppinger et al. 1983)