Don’t know if you’ve thought about this or not, but after our ‘granddog’ Lilly was bitten by a rattlesnake a few years ago and after some friends of ours lost an alpaca to a rattlesnake bite, we have been vaccinating our LGD Luke with a yearly rattlesnake vaccination.  We haven’t started vaccinating the alpacas yet, but thought it was important to get the dog vaccinated.  It is a yearly shot and since we live ’sort of’ in South Texas where the rattlesnake roam, we want to be prepared.  We have never seen a rattlesnake on our property, but we have friends in the area who have seen them.  We do have a lot of rocks, and that seems to be where they do like to hang out.  We also vaccinate our house dogs as they spend a lot of time outside and especially our sheltie would find it interesting to get her nose right up near a snake. 

I think we may talk to our veterinarians about whether or not we should think about this vaccine for the alpacas.  It is a rather expensive shot, but it sure would be a lot more expensive to lose an alpaca.

This is Lucca (Luke).  He is a Maremma Sheepdog (in Italy known as a Cane Da Pastore Maremmano-Abruzzese) and he is such an important part of our alpaca ranch.  We got him as a six week old pup weighing in at a whopping 15 pounds!  He is now almost two years old and weighs in at around 100 pounds.  He is what helps us to sleep at night and we know he works at night because we do hear him give his warning barks.  There are schools of thought in the world of working livestock protection animals that says one should not pay a lot of attention to the animal such as you would a house pet, but we have totally messed that thought around.  Luke loves for us to give him ‘love’ every day, yet he still does a perfect job of protecting his charges.  Personally, I don’t think a LGD should be ‘ignored’, but I am firmly in the school that the animal never leaves his area of work to come inside with the humans.  Luke has never known another place but our barn and the fencing that keeps everyone safe in their pastures.  It is his home, he is happy and he is a hard working dog.  We love him…..  Good boy Luke!!