In our old country of Chile, a policeman is nicknamed Paco. Alpacas are, also, called paco-vicunas, so Paco was a perfect name for our guard dog.

We got our first alpacas in our farm in Maine in October 1999. Shortly thereafter, The Alpacas Magazine ran an article about a herd of alpacas that was attacked by coyotes with tragic consequences, the loss of a female and some crias. Our farm was already protected by a no-climb, 6 foot tall fence with a top and bottom electric wire. But our neighbor, a long time resident of Maine, advised us that coyotes, when hungry, could find a way to dig under and get to our precious alpacas. The article and our neighbor’s advice were enough for me.

I called a livestock guard dog breeder, Akbash, and the next week we had our guard dog on the farm.

We named him Paco, he was 4 months old and a whopping 50 lb already! On the trip back from Connecticut, I learned that this dog did not travel well. He got car sick and we could not get him back in a car, not if he was awake.

Along with the dog, we purchased a book on how to train him to be a guard dog, and how to relate to him. One of our worries, that he needed to be socialized so he would not attack humans, was no problem, this dog loved humans. He would put both front paws on the shoulders of our farm visitors at the risk of giving them a heart attack, or grab our youngest teen age daughter by a sleeve and not let her go in order to tell her he wanted attention!

However, the issue of his behavior with the alpacas was a very different story. He loved them, too, perhaps too much. He tried to play with them, chasing them if they ran from him and gently (I think) pulled their tails or bit their behinds. He had a lot of fun, but not the alpacas.

After reading the dog book, I started my training. The first thing I did was to grab him by the ruff, shaking him while saying,” No!”. But I was not there all the time to correct him so as soon as I was back in the house he will try to play again. Soon he was 100 Lb and this correction was not feasible, so I called the breeder for advice. He said not to worry, he was a puppy, that at around year old he was going to stop this play, but in the meantime I was to put him on a dangler. This is a devise that is supposed to stop the dog from running. A foot long wood stick is hung from the collar of the dog, so that every time he runs the stick would hit him on the front legs. The book also said that these dogs have the mind and determination of a two-year old baby. So, Paco kept playing and later learned how to hold the stick in his mouth and still run. We took the stick off when we realized that he was developing swelling on the front legs where the stick was hitting him.

After the second call to the breeder, we attached him to a car tire with a very long chain, about 10 feet long. By this time, he weighed 100 lb and was already a year old, but the breeder said that some of these dogs take longer to calm down, so we started our wait until he was two years old.

Do I need to say that the tire did not work? One morning, while having my morning cup of coffee, noticed that all the alpacas were surrounding Paco who did not move from the front of the barn. The reason was very simple; he had wrapped the chain around the front barn post and could not move at all having left free about 1 foot of chain. After we released him, he was up to chase the alpacas around the barn again, tire in tow, leaving chain marks at the corners of the concrete slab of the barn. At this time, we added a sign to the front of the farm saying: “No dogs allowed beyond this point”. Paco had almost gotten out of the pasture, tire and all, going after a dog that a neighbor brought during a visit.

Since the tire was not working, we released him, to save the barn and the fences and he was over a year by now and living with the males.

To get Paco to live with the males was not easy, like all else with this dog. The pastures for the females and males were contiguous, separated only by the 6 foot high fence. My husband had to excavate a trench under the gate, and to fill it with rocks so Paco could not dig under to get back to the females, his pals. We separated Paco, because there were crias coming and we did not want him playing with them and causing an injury. I had tried already to keep him away, always just to see him back, the following morning, in the females pasture. I could almost see the laugh in his face, making fun of me! I had placed large logs, large stones, and 20 lb concrete bricks, all to be moved by those powerful front paws. So I told Gil, my husband, that his work would be lost. But it was not, Paco did not even try to touch Gil’s work after seeing him work the whole morning on this project. I realized then that Paco took Gil as the master of the herd and I was just a lower ranking officer on the farm.

So now Paco was with the males, and we had a different set of issues. The males get into fights to determine their hierarchy. These are kind of friendly, screaming and spitting discussions that do not lead to serious damage, but did upset me, being a new farmer. With me trying to stop them from fighting, I told Paco that it was not an acceptable behavior and he took it on himself to stop the males, separating them any way he could, including, but not restricted to, pulling tails, biting rump, etc. When one of the males ended up with a small puncture wound and a slight limp that lasted an afternoon, I decided to call a trainer. He came and said, very politely, that these dogs are untrainable, that they need their independent thinking to do their job. Then I called a Great Pyrenees dog breeder, just to be told that I did not have the personality to have a guard dog and gave me a very bleak prospective. By now the dog was close to two years old, and probably was going to stop his misbehavior soon.

I considered giving him up, but I was afraid that he would never adjust to living with a family, and being so large (140+ lb now) he could do some serous damage. On the other hand, I felt very secure with him on the farm, without him I could not sleep, worried what could get inside the pastures.

So we kept trying. The next thing was a training collar. This was supposed to work up to 2 miles away, but Paco just shook is head every time I zapped him when he was chasing alpacas . He waited until he thought I was not watching. But Paco’s training collar worked perfect for a friend’s Doberman. This Doberman is probably the best behaving dog in town.

Throughout this time, Paco has taken care of every snake, mouse, turkey, raccoon, skunk that managed to get close to him. He also got a snapping turtle and porcupines, with the subsequent trips to the veterinary clinic, under sedation of course, to take care of the porcupine quills. Also, he stole lunch boxes, coffee mugs and doughnuts left inside the pick up trucks of the fence installers, and later, of the carpenter who added the run in the sheds. He “killed” also a large machine rented to drill in the ledge to set posts for the fences. Luckily, the renting store just laughed at the circumstances and replaced the hoses at no charge. (That machine was never left inside the pasture again) But the heavy unplugged electric cable to supply the power to that machine was lost to Paco’s teeth the following night.

One more peculiarity of this dog is that he does not accept food from your hand, not even meat. He waits until you leave the goodies and then he takes it, and eats it far away from you. In other words, he wants to be really independent, his own boss. Paco is 6 years old now; he is still a beautiful dog. He taught the alpacas how to read him, he barks and depending on the bark tone, the animals run to the barn or do not pay attention. If they get into a serous discussion, Paco runs and sets himself between the two males looking at each one of them. The alpacas just know that they better stop their show right there, peace now restored.

He rarely plays chase, and now he is very gentle, just putting a paw on the alpaca’s body, like an invitation to play. He is not happy if he is away from the males. When we developed a new larger pasture for the females we tried to take Paco, now calmer, with them. It did not work. He was always looking toward the males pasture and tended not to move much, very unhappy. The females, not used to have Paco with them, stood way from him and did not get in the barn. So he was back with his friends very soon. They say that large dogs do not live long, perhaps 8 years. We cannot think of this farm without Paco.