In this first‑person farm vlog, Victor (Speaker A) chronicles the acquisition and integration of a new livestock guardian dog, Winnie, on his family’s farm. The video opens with the excitement of rescuing Winnie from a liquidated farm and the immediate goal of bonding her with the existing sheep herd. Early attempts reveal Winnie’s intelligence and propensity to escape, exposing multiple fence breaches and her tendency to chase and frighten the sheep. The narrator experiments with various training strategies—including a 2x4‑style collar, intensive stall‑bonding, and time‑lapse observation—to encourage protective behavior toward the flock. Despite these efforts, Winnie continues to dig, run, and stress the sheep, leading the family to reconsider her role. After discussions with family members and a trainer, they decide to repurpose Winnie as a general farm and house guard rather than a dedicated sheep guardian. The vlog concludes with Winnie successfully deterring coyotes and protecting chickens, pigs, and the household, illustrating an unexpected but satisfying outcome where the original goal shifted to a broader protective role.
Chapters
Earlier this year, we got our very first livestock guardian dog, Winnie. And this is the untold story. We're about to get the dog. Which one is she? Right there. Right there. Yeah, right here. Dog world. Hello. There she is. We've been thinking about getting a livestock guardian dog for a really long time, but just things didn't pan out. But there was an opportunity come aboard. That we just couldn't resist. A farm was going out of business and had to liquidate everything. Needless to say, I and the family were very excited. We got Winnie home, and first priority is to get them to bond with the sheep. And that was handy because the sheep were in the pole barn because it was winter. Good girl, good girl. She's very thirsty. I think it's good that she's gotten water. She knows there's water here. It's kind of becoming a home base. We are gonna unleash her. Definitely gonna keep her in here with the sheep at least for 3 days before we even let them out into the paddock. The problem was she's super smart and just kept escaping rather easily. Look who's already out! Well, she came to the porch. Well, I'm gonna give her one just so she knows this is home. I just laid out some raw dog feed. Okay, well, shoot. Come on, Winnie, come on, come on. So we didn't make much progress training her in the pole barn. There she is, she went right through the sheep feeder right there. It was close enough to time to put sheep out on pasture, so we just did because I knew she would stay inside the sheep net. And she is super respectful of this fence, not even coming close. All right, I think all is well. Best thing I think we can do is leave y'all out here on a time-lapse. You guys watch. You guys see that? Dan, roll the time-lapse. We got it. She got frisky playing with them and they busted through the fence. But even there, sometimes she was somehow escaping. Well, there she is 5 minutes later. Okay, she's got all roughly muddy feet, so it makes me think she's going through the swamp. I found a number of places where the fence isn't even on. That didn't connect, guys. If she starts breaking through a, a dead fence, she'll start breaking through a live fence. We've got the breaches fixed. All right, uh, you tied it up good there. And this time, let's hang out and see what she's doing. I think she's gonna breach that woven wire fence. There she goes, she just went under it, guys. She's out. Okay, there she comes. Okay, yeah, no way she's gonna stay in this. She went under the woven wire, not the electric, so that's good. Thanks for getting her. And probably one of the most concerning problems is that she would every once in a while chase the sheep and just scared the living daylights out of them. I just caught her chasing them. We let her out in the morning because we're out here and we can go— but what happens when we're not out here? See, they're way against that fence. She's pinned them up against the corner. I mean, she's playing, but she's got them scared to death, backed into the corner. She means them no harm, but my goodness, Wendy, give them some mercy, honey. Give them some mercy. I thought maybe if we put her in the ram pen, she'll be able to bond with them because they'll be in such a tight proximity. We were about to set up the pigs and we heard Mama drive on the side-by-side calling for Winnie way down there. She must have gotten out. Winnie! What happened? I looked out the window and she was at the edge of the property, so I just ran down and got— I was calling for you and I don't know where you were. I'm way up at the pigs. And so I just was like, well, I guess I'm gonna— she crawl under or bust out? I have no idea. I didn't see that. I only saw her come up on the road. Okay, at $100, she crawled under right there. What do you think, Josiah? Yeah, or she got out right there. That's freshly dug. Didn't even eat your food yet. This time we're gonna have to tie her up. Okay, we're gonna get you. We're gonna get you saddled and trained. But I don't think she was very happy there. And then a fellow reached out from Premier One, just a cold email, and said I train their dogs. Sometimes people can put a 2x4 around the neck and it lets them walk, but if they run, it'll, it'll bang their knee and they'll quickly stop. And that could train her. So we tried it. It just hangs. It's supposed to just barely touch the ground right there. Not even. Okay. Yeah, so she can walk. It's not going to drag it, it's just going to hang. All right, and she'll be able to walk, but she won't be able to run. Yeah, we're going to make it shorter. It's a work of art. It is. There it is. Come on, Winnie. She did not— she don't want to go back in there. Hadn't made friends with the sheep yet. Now you got to walk with your head high, okay? I think we need to take a link off of it. Well, there, there, it's right, but I don't know if she walks around like that. I took a link off and already I feel better about it. It's hanging there. Yeah, that's her more normal head length. Let's go, because she's not gonna go to the sheep with us standing here. But the 2x4 didn't stay on very long. Mostly our fault. I don't know how much I was behind that idea anyway. Somehow Winnie has broken— can you see any kind of breach? Oh, Mom found this and that was open, so that's, that's probably it. Probably just fell off. I don't know how well it's working, but it's hard to work if it's not even on. Did you screw it up this time? Okay. So I thought of the stall. We had to get a way to figure out how to get this dog and the sheep bonded. Could we put them in deep bedding in the stalls, like a 10-foot by 12, for 2 weeks? Surely they'll bond. Day 2. You want to sneak in on them? See what they're doing? Still, still, uh, segregated, huh? Hey girl, how you doing this morning? You doing good? Those sheep scared, still afraid of you. She's more interested in me petting her, so let's pet her over the feed. They're scared of me too, you know what? Well, they'll probably get used to me if I stayed in here with down for 2 weeks. However, we didn't see much progress the first couple of days, but I didn't give up. It's been like 5 days. Let's see if we can see some sort of dramatic improvement. Well, already off the bat They're coming over. They're like right next to her. You coming over with her? Let's go in and see if we see some change if we— with her moving around. After 2 weeks, it seemed to me much better. They seemed totally used to her, so happily we put them all back out on pasture where they belong. It's been 2 weeks-ish. Winnie's ready to get out of here. Hold on, I'm gonna, I'm gonna test them. The sheep are definitely ready to get out of here. It's spring, they belong on grass. You ready, Miss Thing? All right, let's see how they interact. I don't think they're as skittish. Well, they're certainly not as skittish. Look, right? Yeah, these three still hate her. Ah, and these three are okay. Yes. Well, maybe we've taken some pressure off our fence by getting half of them to be less afraid. Wow. We gotta get her out of here before she digs a hole to China. She dug one there, too. Wow. Two feet deep. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Go in there, go down. I don't think we made any progress. I think we made zero progress. Look, she's not even running at them and they're running. Let's put the, uh, let's put the 2x4 on her so she does— she may learn not to run. We tried the 2x4 again just to mitigate the risk, but that didn't work out again. Do you guys know where her board went? No, but she hasn't bothered the sheep. Well, she's down here. And the sheep are terrified. And they're way up there. Terrified. This keeps getting unscrewed. Well, it's only been, what, 2 days? And she's dropped this again. Looked like that got unscrewed off. I could replace that, but I'm just not so sure. It's working. She's gonna know as soon as this thing gets off, start running for the, for the sheep. There was something special about last night though, hearing her barking out here, and then Jonah not being sure if he turned the fence on or off. There's something reassuring though that she was here with them. Hey, that's— well, I guess that's the pig's milk, so I guess you can have that. It's really concerning to me Sheep are so scared. They are completely opposite of her always, and they don't have the greatest condition right now, and I'm wondering if that's some of the reasons. Freaking stressed out. They're just curled up in the corner. Are you even letting them eat? That's bad. I don't think it's them— some— her so much, although she did run through them yesterday. Scare the living daylights out of them. Today she has to be in the cow's paddock or the sheep are gonna die. They're gonna be so stressed out. I wasn't really sure how to resolve the situation, and then Jonah had a suggestion. We could just keep it for our own sake or to guard the whole farm. I didn't think that was a bad idea because she still might be able to— well, she'll be able to guard the whole farm. The sheep are inside of an electric net. Well, we haven't had a predator problem with them until now, so that's been working. It really came down to she's gonna inadvertently kill the sheep because they're gonna kill themselves just being so freaked out. So at this point, we had nothing to lose. I'm worried that Winnie's not spayed, that she would go off and get bred. But now I have to think about things. I have to think who's more important, and I'm thinking the sheep are more important. So we might just have to get Winnie out of here and have her You know, I'll have her patrol the farm, uh, guard the house. Yeah, look, they're all over the place grazing. Okay, Wendy's going out, and if she runs away and gets bred, uh, we'll just have to deal with that. She does run away, we'll have like a property map and we'll go looking for her just in case she went out of our property. Okay, I like it. Still in it. I like it. Someone said, guys, you could get her on a leash and walk her around our property line. Yeah, that's what Mama said. I wasn't sure at first, but After Winnie was free, something felt right about it. We have a guard dog now for our personal home, and then I know in the day and the night she just automatically roams. I'll hear her barking and I'll hear coyotes, and then I'll quickly hear Winnie. She's up there getting somebody. This hasn't— it hasn't been so bad, her being out. She's guarding us. She senses There's something up there. That's near where the sheep are. So overall, she's not just guarding the sheep, she's guarding the chickens in the front yard, she's guarding us, she's guarding, uh, any piglets we may have down at the pole barn or wherever. This is one of those cases where what we wanted on our goal, it failed, but what we ended up getting actually turned out great for us. And this is one of those unique situations where you don't get you what you want, but then you realize what you really wanted. And we couldn't be more happy about the situation. This is the happy ending to that story. Sure, she's not with our sheep. Our sheep are recovering. She's over there barking. Look. And just the other night, we heard the coyotes, like, right in our backyard, and she was right there on them.
