Dogs are an important part of our life here at Ancient Ponies Farm. We arrived here with Oscar and Pumpkin, neither of whom are useful as farm dogs, though we love them dearly! 
Last May, Elka joined our family. She’s now 7 1/2 months old and is starting her training as a herding dog. In the video below you can see her first encounter with sheep. She is showing some good instinct here, which hopefully we will develop over time….and with our soon to arrive sheep. Yes, Maybelle, Oliva (Leicester Longhairs) and 
Mary Agnes (a Gotland- shown in picture) are being picked up, by Zoe and me, in two days time. Since Jasmine, Jessica and Jade are all pregnant and due in the spring, likely with twins or triplet baby goats, we thought we’d wait to breed sheep until next year.
With all of the prey animals we are now responsible for (3 sheep, 3 pregnant goats, 15 chickens and 3 ducks), we’ve been thinking a lot about getting a guardian. A fox already took one of our ducks in broad daylight while I watched. We tried two lamas but they didn’t work out.
So meet Nel. This photo is Nel at 4 weeks so you can imagine what she will ultimately look like. She is a Maremma, which is an Italian dog, bred to guard livestock. She will ultimately live in the barn with the animals and guard against fox and coyote. As we are learning to train Elka for herding, we are also reading up on how to help a livestock guard dog be the best and happiest she can be. She comes next week when she is 8 weeks old.
She will look something like this:
Oscar clearly enjoys her. His back legs are not functioning well due to a congenital cruciate ligament issue, for which he is getting surgery next week. But he can stay laying down while she jumps all over him. They can play for an hour this way. Pumpkin, of course, hates her just like she hates everything, but the fact that she can sleep on the bed while Elka has to sleep in a crate makes up for the insult.