Hailey was always so eager to greet me when I went out to do my chores, but equally as content to go right back out with her sheep. She taught me so much about what makes the Maremma Sheepdog unique. Hailey had been imprinted on sheep ever since she was a just a pup. She assisted with lambing, broke up quarrels among the sheep, chased off coyote, wolves, eagles and even tried to befriend a young whitetail fawn that found her way into the sheep paddock. Several years ago, I had decided it was time to add poultry to her flock guardian duties, specifically a band of Rhode Island Red roosters that thought I might “free range” with the sheep. Well, things didn’t turn out quite the way I had planned…
I returned to find her peacefully resting in the shade with what looked like a scene from the holocaust. Hailey eradicated 27 chickens for me that day in less than 2 hours. I humbly admit that I was the fool for not thinking this through, and simply turned her loose with what appeared to be lamb eating vultures from her perspective. Since then, I have learned to introduce chickens more slowly and have been successful in teaching her that chickens are not an aerial predator, but rather, partners in our little ecosystem. Once she figured this out, we had no further issues. And lucky for me, I had no chickens to butcher that fall.
Once again, Hailey taught me of the importance of supervision when raising a young pup or adding a completely foreign variety of livestock to the guardian duties. Yes you can imprint an older dog on another species, but it does require an introduction and a bit of time and patience. Hailey left us in the spring of 2014. She now resides in her favorite spot next to this tree, where she loved to spend her afternoons resting in the shade.