stritafarm
stritafarm on Hacker News
Staff Software Engineer Role is listed here as SF or Remote (US) but application requires affirmation of willingness to move to SF.
Rapid Unstructured Dissipation of Energy
RUDE
I was searching for information on where the blight region is and isn't. Everything I found simply said it is "widespread in the USA."
I have quite a few acres and local contacts in my area that also grow trees. Feel free to reach out.
Depending on the breed "people-motivation" may not be much of a problem, especially if your hobby farm is on the same land as your home. In practice if the dog is around people a lot it
needs to be socialized for their safety. Also, certain breeds (ahem, pyrenees) are just people-motivated regardless and need to be explicitly trained to stay with the animals. (We selected pyrenees for this reason as they are far safer around family than most other LGD breeds.)
The pressure-release paradigm is helpful here: use her people-motivation to your advantage. Give her attention and affection around the goats, praise her when she runs off "threats" (even birds), but if she abandons them and (for example) comes to beg for food from your picnic be very gruff and cold until she returns to her charges.
One final note is that a dog on watch may look "lazy" or like they are not watching their charges, but dogs rely on different senses (less sight and more smell and sound) and have their own alert threshholds. Our LGDs sit on our patio all day unless something comes around, and then they are immediately alert to it and running it off. At night, they are patrolling.
We use LGDs to protect our (still very small) flock in East Texas from coyotes and strays. The paragraph on animal behavior is one I wish everyone who works with animals, whether pets, stock, or working animals, would read and understand.
If you think of animals as purely instinctual or if you anthropomorphize them and try to train them like children, you and the animal both are in for a bad time.