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Male or Female Great Pyrenees

Ken LaVere

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Location: Southern Kentucky near Glasgow

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posted 12 years ago

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I have a friend who has a litter available. I am unsure of what gender would be best for us.
- We have young children
- We have chickens would like to get goats next year and may be a cow some day.
- We have 16 acres

I am not to thriled about having an animal that can not relive them selfs. So I as thinking should I spay or neuter?

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Cj Sloane

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Location: Vermont, off grid for 24 years!

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posted 12 years ago

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In general, males are easier.
You will likely lose a chicken to an accidental death (rough play).
Pyrs often wander/ are hard to contain. My maremma can climb a 6' fence.
Be aware that 25% of the time it doesn't work out (the dogs can be too aggressive or whatever).

Having said all that, I have 3 LGDs and you really need 2 for livestock protection. They don't eat more than any other dog even though they are so big because the do spend much time laying around. Low protein feed is fine (at least when full grown).

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Devon Olsen

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Location: Central Wyoming -zone 4

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posted 12 years ago

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^do you neuter your males?

from my understanding those who are not neutered males are often times more aggressive with many species of animals, have you noticed any large amount of aggressiveness leaving them not neutered if they are?

it doesnt seem to make much sense to me to mutilate your dog or in a more practical sense prevent yourself from breeding the dog should the need or want arise

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Cj Sloane

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Location: Vermont, off grid for 24 years!

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posted 12 years ago

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My maremma in not neutered and is not aggressive at all to the livestock. The most aggressive is the spayed female pyr/kuvatz. Sometimes she is just protecting her food from the sheep, or herself from the tom turkeys. Sometimes she just plays a little rough with the sheep.

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Kathryn Blau

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posted 12 years ago

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Hi Ken, we have a 10 month old male great pyr mixed with yellow lab/ golden retriever. We've had him about 6 months and he is GREAT with kids. He's not purebred so I can't say whether it's the pyr or lab in him, but from what I've read on pyrs they are bred to protect flocks and will often adopt small children as their flock, and thus be very gentle and protective with them.

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Thea Olsen

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Location: suburbs of Chicago USDA zone 5b

posted 12 years ago

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I can't compare males and females, having only ever had females, but my experience has been that pyrs are amazing with young children and small animals. Our first one was out with the chickens every day and we never lost one on her watch. We didn't have the chickens when she was a puppy, though. She was in the room with us when our children were born, and was gently protective of them from day 1.
Now we have a pyr pup and we don't have chickens anymore, but we do have rabbits. Within the 1st week we had her, she managed to push past me at feeding time and get into the rabbit cage. No problem-she just wanted to snuggle with them. That said, she does need to be supervised when the rabbits are out, because she's a puppy and could hurt them accidentally.
We have our dogs spayed. Breeding dogs isn't something I'm interested in right now.

Ken LaVere

Posts: 35

Location: Southern Kentucky near Glasgow

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posted 12 years ago

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Thank you every one for your feed back and Kathryn for your wonderful photo. We have tentatively decided on a male. The comments posted here plus what I determaned biased on online research was that personality has more to do with each individual dog then there gender. We are going with a male mainly because if it excapes it will not returned knocked up.

We are currently out of state from our friend with the puppy's so we asked him to hold back what he precived to be the best male. We wil see.....

Greta Beach

Posts: 14

posted 12 years ago

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Ken a goat farmer here in Kentucky told me that if you were not going to neuter your Pyr then you will have to get a mated pair. He lost thousands of dollars when his big female invited all the males in the neighborhood and helped them run his livestock to death. He found her a mate and they are very content. A male will hunt all available females in heat also. No one will be home with the stock... They will always find a way out of the fence if an available female is around. Good Luck!

Margaret Hefner

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posted 12 years ago

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My GrPyr and Chessie mix was a rescue after 2 failed adoption attempts when she was 8 1/2 mos old from the Humane Society. She's about to be 3 years old and every single "OMG!" is proving worth it. She's fabulous. She's Maggie the Great.

She has her own (MilkBone toy) bunny, I'll have my bunnies, and she'll choose to be nice to them for me. She is never going to have pups, per H'Society rules, but she's as compassionate and cunning as they come. I'm confident that the behaviors she'll need will come easily to her.

She's just about old enough to give a training program for Rescue Services, Companion Services, whatever. I wouldn't have thought that a female GrPyr would be so sweet and warm, but she is. She greets everyone from everywhere (we live in a recreation area) and only behaves poorly for folks who would best be somewhere else. I see that she has corrected her early misunderstandings, for the most part, and really enjoys being enjoyed. She's my partner! The retriever is there, but it's the Great Pyrenees that gives her the great mind and ability to stop and make choices. I really am impressed with her.

Get a girl!

Ken LaVere

Posts: 35

Location: Southern Kentucky near Glasgow

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posted 12 years ago

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Thank you all for you feed back, incite and story's! My friend with the pups used observation to pick out the in his opinion the "best one" for us. As we were in Iowa and were unable to do any observation on our own.

So I am proud to present Maddock he is 10 weeks old....

Now I just need to master the
homemade dog food thing.....

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Cj Sloane

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Posts: 3738

Location: Vermont, off grid for 24 years!

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posted 12 years ago

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Very cute. You may want to take him to some puppy classes when he's old enough. So much of what they do is instinct but "sit", "down", & "come" do come in handy.

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Erin Conte

Posts: 17

posted 3 years ago

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I just got a 1yr old M GP off CL. Other than not having any car riding experience, he shows the signs of being locked in a run for half his life. He’s getting neutered ASAP. We don’t have fenced property and he broke under the chain link kennel last night. But he came to the front gate. I locked him in the “animal free zone” front yard and he didn’t dig any of my plants. Rearranged some of my skulls and such I had around my gardens, but didn’t chew them up. He’s pretty stubborn but typical GP and a total sweetie.
His name was Maximo, but they called him Bro. We are calling him Oak.

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