SWEET HOME, Ore. — Bryan Moon lifted his baseball cap, scratched his head, and laughed as a 140-pound fluffy, white dog barreled toward him. Moon rewarded Apollo, a 7-year-old Great Pyrennes Akbash mix, for responding to his call by allowing the massive dog to lean against his leg while he massaged its thick coat.

Just a few moments previous, Apollo had been camouflaged among Moon’s flock of 200 Katahdin sheep dotting the grassy hillside.

Moon and his wife, Mary, moved to the 64-acre Moonlight Farm in Sweet Home, Ore., in 2015. After working as an administrator in federal prisons around the country, Moon was looking forward to a simpler, quieter life raising sheep in the lush countryside.

“I have worked for somebody else for 40 years,” said Moon. “I loved the idea of having my own property. Here, I’ve got my own business. It’s a lot of work and a huge responsibility, but I can do as much or as little as I want to do.”

But life on a working farm has not always been as peaceful as Moon initially envisioned. Before they even moved onto the property, the Moons were warned by the previous owners that if they planned on keeping the 62 sheep that were already there, they needed to invest in some guardian dogs.

There were lots of coyotes in the area, Moon was told. Before he even stepped onto the land, Moon picked up two livestock guardian puppies from a sheep farm in California.

Moon credits his success as a first-time farmer to the dogs.

“I do about 100-some lambs a year. I’m up to about 900 lambs since we started,” said Moon. “And I have not lost a lamb to a predator yet.”

Today, Moon owns four livestock guardian dogs. Having the dogs has given him the security to expand his production from sheep to goats, hogs and Irish Dexter cattle.

Some of Moon’s neighbors have not been so lucky. According to Moon, they do not own livestock guardian dogs. “The neighbor behind us actually lost a calf to a mountain lion,” Moon said. “They don’t own any dogs.”

Predators Abound

With the populations of coyotes, cougars and other predators stabilizing in recent years, attacks on livestock remain an ever-pressing concern for many Oregon ranchers. Yet, many farmers and ranchers say they are not interested in killing predators to protect their livestock. Instead, they use livestock guardian dogs to chase predators away.

“I just want to get along with everybody that lives around me, and that includes the predators,” said Moon. “We’ve been here for seven years, and I’ve not killed a coyote since we’ve been here.”

According to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the populations of species such as gray wolves and cougars, once on the brink of elimination from Oregon, are now slowly bouncing back. Although the “the status of wolves in the state is more complex,” ODFW identifies cougars as “an Oregon success story.”

While most predators hunt alone, wolves are different. They hunt in packs and can devastate a herd of cattle or flock of sheep, even guardian dogs, ranchers say. Most wolves are in eastern and southern Oregon.

‘Gold Standard’

Some of the success with other predators is due in part to programs such as the Agricultural and Wildlife Protection Program (AWPP).

Randy Comeleo, an ecologist and program adviser, co-founded AWPP with his wife, Pam Comeleo, five years ago after a few of his neighbors raised concerns about seeing dead wildlife caught in snares. After doing some research, Comeleo discovered that Oregon State University’s Sheep Research Center had hired a trapper to protect its sheep from predators.

“We just wanted to know what’s going on,” said Comeleo. “Why is the university trying to protect their sheep by killing wildlife? Isn’t there another way? So we set out to learn about it, about alternatives to trapping to protect livestock, rather than reacting to livestock that’s killed after the fact.”

What Comeleo found was that non-lethal predator deterrence, including livestock guardian dogs, are effective when it comes to protecting livestock and wildlife.

“Livestock guardian dogs are the gold standard for livestock protection,” said Comeleo.

In 2017, he decided to start the grant program for Benton County. Today, the county offers grants using taxpayer funds to farmers for the purchase of proactive non-lethal predator deterrents to protect their livestock.

Despite how successful the guardian dogs have been at protecting livestock, Comeleo acknowledges that the dogs aren’t for everyone.

“Well, they can be a bit of work. First of all, it can be very expensive to buy one, and then one of the greatest costs of having a livestock guardian dog is the investment of time,” said Comeleo. “But if you do a good job training them, they can be extremely effective.”

Becoming the ‘Student’

Cindy Benson has always been an “animal person.” Animal husbandry has been her life’s work. In 2006, Benson and her husband, Mitch, an equine veterinarian, moved to a 360-acre ranch 40 miles north of the California border in Gold Hill, Ore.

Eventually, Benson became well known for the livestock that she raised — especially her mini donkeys. For nine years, Benson bred and raised the donkeys in peace, with no direct predator attacks. But one day, Benson noticed some of her donkeys were missing.

“One of the neighbors alerted me to tracks and drag marks across the road,” said Benson. “And then we found a hoof and part of a leg in the drainage.”

The tracks belonged to a cougar.

Benson’s ranch is tucked in a valley surrounded by federal land, which for her was a big draw to the land in the first place. Both Benson and her husband have always enjoyed watching elk herds and other wildlife pass through their property.

But after that incident, Benson felt restless. The ranch no longer felt like a safe haven. The land, like the wildlife that passed through, felt wild and unpredictable.

“Prior to the dogs arriving here, there were three mountain lions trapped and killed on this property. I found that tragic,” she said.

Benson asked the trapper who visited their property what she should do. He suggested she look into getting livestock guardian dogs.

That’s exactly what Benson did.

“The animals are my partners,” she said. “...I was surprised by how taken I was with these dogs, the differences in them really hooked me in and then very quickly on the heels of that, a deep respect for what they do and the wisdom of what they know how to do all on their own.

“And so really what happened from that point on is I became their student — that’s how I see it,” she said.

Since purchasing her first guardian dogs, Benson has not only fallen in love with the dogs and the services they provide, but has since dedicated herself to raising, breeding, and training maremmas — a large, white breed known for its friendly nature and exceptionally proficient guarding style. Over the last seven years, Benson has trained (or as she puts it, she has “been trained by”) over 250 maremmas.

‘Livestock is the Nucleus’

Despite how effective the dogs are at protecting livestock — training, raising and owning them is no small undertaking. Benson strives to make that clear with all of her potential clients.

“To keep them valuable — valuable to you and doing their job — you have to be willing to work with them, pay attention to them, and give them what they need to do their job,” said Benson, who sold six-month-old maremma puppies at $2,500 each. “LGDs are a big investment of time and money. And they can fail someone, it’s very possible for a livestock loss to occur even with a LGD. So there’s a lot at stake for an LGD owner in terms of getting it right.”

Part of getting it right involves allowing the dogs to do what they were bred to do: guard and protect livestock.

“...(T)o take their livestock away from them is punitive,” said Benson. “The livestock is the nucleus for livestock guardian dogs as people are for companion dogs.”

Benson says the majority of the training she provides does not involve teaching the dogs how to protect livestock — they know that instinctively — but rather, teaching them how to work with people.

“My training is about how to have a human as a partner,” she said.

The New Norm

Over the last few years, many small-scale farms have been popping up around Oregon. And although livestock guardian dogs have been around for centuries, they are not as commonly utilized as predator deterrents as they once were.

Derek Broman, the carnivore-furbearer coordinator at ODFW, hopes that with the increased number of human-predator interactions, livestock guardian dogs “ideally become a more common practice” for livestock owners.

“Hopefully, these dogs become just this common practice, or common prescriptive action for certain types of livestock and certain types of landscapes,” said Broman. “Maybe it becomes more of a norm rather than an oddity.”

According to Broman, more human-predator interactions are inevitable. “We may see robust, large carnivore populations that are at capacity being forced into the nooks and crannies of urban and suburban areas and increased human population — so we’re just going to have more interaction. I just hope that we can be proactive wherever possible.”

Whether a rancher owns 64 acres or 640, livestock guardian dogs are a proactive solution to protecting livestock while conserving carnivores, their supporters say.

“I don’t believe that predators should die,” said Benson. “They are part of the ecosystem. One of us is not more important than the other, but at the end of the day I moved into their backyard.”