Working in Pairs

An interesting fact that we have found throughout our research and work in Mongolia and elsewhere, is that Livestock Guardian Dogs, while they work very well solo, work even better in pairs! A pair of dogs that have grown up with livestock will often form a rotating shift so that one of them is always with the animals and the other either gets a break (or sometimes will hang back to protect the people). This is effective because it means the dogs tend to tire less easily so won’t abandon the sheep or goats to return home. This pattern doesn’t always only occur with Bankhar in Mongolia. We have seen a pair of dogs made up of one Bankhar and one mixed-breed dog act just as two Bankhar would in terms of this partnership. Sometimes one of the dogs in this partnership is older, and it serves as a mentor for the younger dog. It is these kind of partnerships of Bankhar dogs that we hope to create in the future to aid the host families we work with.

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