Why livestock guardian dogs are sparking conflicts between rural and urban Utah

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Animal control found the Great Pyrenees dog limping along the Deer Creek Reservoir banks where he’d been picking at dead fish to stay alive.

There’d been several sightings of him before the agency finally scooped him up late last year, but no one knows how long he was there or where he originally came from, says Ashlie Kincaid Blackham, a Midway resident who fosters dogs.

Roughly two years old, the dog was in bad shape when Blackham first saw him. Fish hooks were caught on his face. His paw was mangled from stepping in a trap, and his fur — normally fluffy as a cotton ball — was matted with twigs and burrs.

Later named Bear, he’d been a livestock guardian dog (LGD) — or a type of working dog used by many ranchers to keep sheep herds safe from coyotes and other predators. Over years of fostering, Blackham said, she’s grown disturbed by how often dogs like Bear show up sick, malnourished and abandoned by their owner with no apparent consequences.

“It just is so heartbreaking to me,” she said. “I feel like I come across like some crazy dog lady. But I mean, it’s just mind-blowing.”

Dogs are a valuable asset to the ranchers who employ them, but Blackham and others say they’re often not treated as such, and are largely left unprotected by Utah’s animal cruelty laws. The dogs’ owners even shoot and kill them in some cases.

Ranchers, on the other hand, say the real problem is that people are snatching dogs wrongly identified as abandoned and blame information gaps and hostile attitudes toward their traditional practices.

A livestock guardian dog traveling with its sheep across a remote mountain isn’t lost or distressed, they say, but fulfilling a job description baked into its genetics. And many believe picking up one of these dogs is more like a theft than a rescue.

“These dogs are being taken, in some instances, directly off the herds,” said Utah Rep. Casey Snider, who has sponsored legislation on the subject. “People feel one way or the other that they’re saving the world, when in reality, there are pretty real consequences to those that own those dogs.”

Not only is a valuable dog gone, Snider said, but the LGD owners are also likely to lose some of the sheep left vulnerable to predators.

This conflict between ranchers and dog lovers has emerged across the Mountain West, and advocates predict they’ll only intensify as development creeps into rural areas and more people encounter LGDs.

One man who rescued a litter of puppies in Sanpete County said he received threats from ranchers afterward, while several people in Utah recently landed in court on theft charges after allegedly picking up a dog in Cache County.

With legislation that Snider advanced this year, prosecuting people who pick up these dogs could be even easier going forward.

Outside animal cruelty laws

Tina Overgaard’s interest in livestock guardian dogs began several years ago at the shelter where she volunteered, when a rancher pulled up in a horse trailer and yanked a dog out by its scruff to drop it off.

The animal looked pathetic, she said, recalling that it was missing chunks of fur, covered in lice and sores and cowering in a corner. Overgaard asked others at the shelter if the owner would face any repercussions and was told no.

“One thing I do recall the person saying is we should feel lucky that he actually brought the dog in,” said Overgaard. “Most of the time they will shoot the dogs that don’t work out.”

That’s when she learned LGDs like that one were considered livestock under Utah law and lacked the legal protections of household pets. By state code, the dogs aren’t covered by animal cruelty statutes as long as they’re treated “in accordance with accepted animal husbandry practices or customary farming practices.”

To help officials at the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food interpret what that means, they’ve developed an extensive list of best practices for cattle, poultry and pigs. While it lays out some general guidelines for all livestock, the document says nothing about how to care specifically for LGDs.

Abusing one of these dogs isn’t permitted under the law, according to Snider, who added that prosecutors can and should go after obvious offenders. But a UDAF spokesperson said the agency is unaware of anyone being prosecuted in Utah for abuse or neglect of an LGD.

Overgaard, founder of the Park City-based Coalition for Livestock Guardian Dogs, argues government officials should do better, especially if these animals are permitted to roam free on Utah’s public lands. Her organization advocates for LGDs and tries to promote improved care practices among the agricultural community.

In her view, ranchers who are guilty of abysmal neglect are in the minority, while most try to provide at least a basic level of care for their livestock guardian dogs.

Still, in Overgaard’s experience, there’s often spotty medical treatment for dogs that get hurt, and the animals are frequently thin and malnourished because of parasitic worms. They aren’t always vaccinated, she said, and because they’re unsocialized, they’re difficult to recall and at greater risk of abandonment.

She says ranchers sometimes shoot dogs, something that Snider acknowledges happens in rare cases. Producers, he said, do occasionally kill LGDs that are badly injured or have become feral on the range.

Most concerning to Overgaard is that many dogs haven’t been spayed and neutered, leading to uncontrolled breeding and litters of puppies in the wild.

“I understand that they’re not pets. They don’t require shelter. But they do require some sort of protection that says you have to feed your dog,” she said. “But nothing exists for these dogs. Absolutely nothing. It’s as if they’re invisible.”

A job to do

Livestock guardian dogs have been popular for centuries in parts of the world but didn’t come into common use in the United States until the late 1970s, when they emerged as a nonlethal alternative to poisoning or shooting predators.

The dogs repel predators by patrolling a perimeter around a herd and then barking to ward off coyotes, bears or mountain lions that wander too close, said Bill Costanzo, an LGD researcher at Texas A&M University. Rarely, the dogs will have to physically attack predators to keep them from harming livestock.

There’s no data about how many livestock guardian dogs are now working in Utah or in the rest of the U.S. But Costanzo said you can roughly estimate it based on the fact that Utah has roughly 285,000 sheep, paired with recommendations that ranchers should use one or two LGDs per 100 sheep.

As the dogs were imported to America, certain notions about their training and care came with them and still persist in some parts of the ranching world, Costanzo said.

One is that the humans should never touch the dogs, or else they might grow attached and won’t want to do their jobs. In fact, Costanzo has found it’s a good idea to have a few short interactions each week with the dogs when they’re puppies so that they’re catchable as adults.

Another misconception is that sterilizing the dogs will make them less protective of the sheep. There isn’t any research to prove that, Costanzo said, and failure to neuter can lead to fights between male dogs out in the field.

But animal rights advocates and members of the public can also misunderstand these dogs, not fully realizing how different their needs and capabilities are from those of a family pet, Costanzo said. To do their jobs, the dogs should bond with the sheep — and giving them too much human attention can undermine that.

They roam across massive areas, with the dogs at his ranch traveling four to seven miles each day, and are extremely hardy in the cold, he said. Last winter, he recalls watching a livestock guardian dog frolicking in fresh snowfall, having the time of his life.

“He was out in the storm, in the snow, rolling around in it, laying in it,” Costanzo said. “Where a normal dog that’s more of a pet, they’d be in their doghouse, curled up cold, wanting to come inside to get warm.”

Costanzo said he knows passersby sometimes worry when they see a livestock guardian dog wandering alone in remote areas, especially if there aren’t any sheep nearby. But if a dog looks healthy, the best course of action is to leave it alone, he said.

Lane Jensen, a sheep rancher who lives in Box Elder County, says he’s had a number of dogs picked up over the years, sometimes driving 70 or 80 miles to retrieve them. His livestock guardian dogs have worn identifying tags on their collars for years, but he’s had so many problems that he’s started microchipping them.

Jensen also vaccinates his LGDs against some diseases, treats them for ticks and worms, and hires full-time herders who camp near the sheep and feed the dogs each day.

He has been disappointed by some of his fellow ranchers who abandon or don’t take good care of their LGDs, he said, but he wishes people wouldn’t lump the entire industry together.

“I can’t change somebody else’s belief, if they have beliefs that every rancher is abusive to animals,” he said. “But I wish that they would do a little research on their own to try to understand the other side of it. … To me, these animals are important. They’re a valuable resource to us, but at the same time, I care for them. They all have names to us.”

Conflicts in court

Jensen has become so frustrated about the conflicts over LGDs that he’s started looking at using other guardian animals, such as llamas and burros. He’s also turned to the authorities for help.

Two women are facing theft charges after allegedly walking onto Jensen’s land in May 2020 and carrying off a livestock guardian dog.

The women, Sarah Later and Shelly Dawn Rovira, celebrated on social media that they’d rescued a dog named “Grace,” a Great Pyrenees who’d sparked a search-and-rescue mission after it was alleged the dog’s owner abandoned her in the snowy mountains.

They said they gave one of Jensen’s employees $400 for the dog and carried her down the mountain since she was too weak to make it on her own. They spent hundreds of dollars more on emergency veterinary care to treat the underweight dog, the women said on social media.

Jensen said they hadn’t taken Grace the Great Pyrenees but his dog Fergie, a female Akbash. He’s filed a $160,000 lawsuit against the women.

While the rancher acknowledges the women encountered one of his employees, the lawsuit claims the worker only speaks Spanish and couldn’t understand them. The employee later found $400 in cash tucked inside his backpack, which he’d left behind while heading up the mountain to herd Jensen’s sheep.

Since then, Jensen has lost roughly 35 lambs and 11 ewes from the flock that Fergie used to protect, the lawsuit states.

A bill passed by the Utah Legislature this year could make criminal cases involving livestock guardian dogs more common.

The legislation, HB166, states that the livestock guardian dogs are “presumed to belong” to the owner of the sheep they are guarding — potentially making it easier to prosecute people accused of stealing the animals.

The bill’s sponsor, Snider, said the goal was to protect ranchers’ livelihoods, not to enable the mistreatment of animals.

“I wanted to really make sure that it was understood that these are not the same as your lap dogs or the dogs you see down at the dog park,” Snider, R-Paradise, said. “They’re working animals tied specifically to working operations.”

‘These are not tools’

Mani Grewal, a Draper resident who rescued LGD puppies in Sanpete County last year, was among those frustrated by Snider’s bill. The existing statute, which led to the prosecution of Later and Rovira, was tilted in favor of ranchers even before the legislative change, he contends.

“They were not trying to steal,” he said of the two women. “They were trying to help.”

Grewal and his wife were out riding all-terrain vehicles in Sanpete County when they initially spotted from afar a female livestock guardian dog and one of her puppies in a small cluster of trees. The sighting set off several weeks of searching for the dogs, with Grewal recruiting other volunteers to scour the area.

They ended up rescuing six puppies but never found the mother, he said.

Grewal was also dismayed when he received threats from LGD owners following the search, which had been publicized in the media. While the ranchers accused him of stealing dogs, Grewal argues it’s ridiculous to penalize people for aiding an animal in distress.

“These are not tools. These are poor animals, and they have rights just as any other living creature,” he said. “They must be collared. They must be identified. If they are sick, the farmer or the rancher cannot put a bullet in them.”

Overgaard says these clashes are bound to increase as cities and suburbs continue to push outward and bump into agricultural areas. Hikers and recreators like Grewal will come across abandoned dogs with greater frequency. And people who bring their own pets into these spaces should be worried about coming into contact with unvaccinated dogs that potentially carry disease, she said.

If ranchers are going to send their LGDs onto public lands, they should at minimum have to spay or neuter them and keep track of them, Overgaard argues.

Other changes will have to come through education, she says.

A goal for Coalition for Livestock Guardian Dogs has been to form relationships with ranchers and encourage them to adopt more updated caretaking practices. Her group is also working to sponsor spaying and neutering, vaccination and microchipping.

But so far suspicion of outside interference has made it difficult to build inroads within the Utah industry, and she says the ranchers who have partnered with her are sometimes reluctant to speak publicly.

Though Overgaard says the coalition’s goal is not to end the use of livestock guardian dogs, ranchers have a hard time believing that, according to Snider. He thinks some people have a fundamental problem with the idea of a dog who doesn’t receive human affection.

“The reality is the issue is much more complex. It has real implications on life and property, and there is value in having [the dogs] there. I’m not sure how you bridge that gap,” he said. “There are some that claim that they want to, and I guess time will tell how honest of brokers they are.”

Right now, he’s not sure there’s enough trust to start that conversation.