Oh, this Great Pyrenees of mine! He is really one of the best dogs I have ever
met. He has just turned two, and should
finally be coming up on his full adult size.
People ask me how much he weights and I lie and say 160lbs. I really have no idea how much he
weights. I haven’t had him on a scale
since he was neutered. It really doesn’t
matter how much he weights, he is huge.
Just trust me on this one. A
giant dog in all ways.
When we
brought him home his primary job was going to be guard the livestock and the
property from predators that want to eat goats and chickens. He started off very strong in that job, but
from the day he arrived we never let him bond with the herd. We snuggled him all day long. I took him on car rides and let him in the
house. He got over peopled to really be
a top notch live stock guardian dog.
Which ended up being better in the long run, because we are all over
that dog any time we are outside.
He lives
a double life at this point. He gets
about one solid bath and brushing on Sunday mornings when the weather even
thinks about being decent. Then I dry
him with the air compressor, set to not be too hard for him. He then gets tied out to dry while I get the
kiddos ready. Then he jumps in the back
of the van and off we go on an adventure.
That dog will hike anywhere – water, cliffs, mud – whatever. He is an all terrain vehicle. Sometimes on steep stair cases I grab on to
him and he helps pull me up the stairs.
The man walks around on his leash like a perfectly trained dog, never
pulls or drags. One out of 10 dogs seem
to really bother him and he might let out an aggressive bark or two, but he is easily
distracted. I let him try to go nose to
nose with another dog last year and he lost his mind. Growling and acting a fool, so I just avoid
the situation now. He will walk right by
other dog on the trail and just pretend they are invisible. By the time we load up and get home he is
snoring.
He
spends the rest of his week getting loved on, but mostly protecting his goats
(who’s pasture he stays in). He cannot
be let to run free as he will go bark at the neighbors house till he makes them
insane. I’m not sure how far he would
roam once he got bored with them, but I don’t want to find out. He doesn’t want to run away, he just forgets
his way back. He loves our 13 year old
lab, Alberta, who is very much on her last leg at this point in her life. I don’t let them play unsupervised because
Alberta falls over if Gus gives her a playful nudge.
He has
really settled into his life of guardian/pet in a wonderful way. His only struggles in when he was a puppy he
would occasionally get too playful and swat a chicken, only to look confused as
to why the chicken was dead. He didn’t
kill them on purpose, but he was just a little too rough.
Augustus
Walter Schaefer is such a great dog. I
hope he lives to be 100.