Male Armenian Gampr - Argos

Newsflash!

Sept 2019
We imported a beautiful Armenian female, her page here.

The Gampr is a rare breed of livestock guardian that is protective against man & beast on territory, but is always extremely loyal and sweet with his family, excellent with children, and generally outgoing when off territory.

Our first experience with a Gampr started when we shipped a 2.5 year old male here this summer from Ingham Farms in ON. He's Preliminary OFA Good, and has successfully protected poultry, goats and pigs. He loves puppies, helping to train them, and is gentle with children.

We had been looking for quite some time for a dog who was trained to livestock since Beyza's rescue background precludes her from being fully trustworthy with smaller stock, goat kids and poultry. While she is a loyal, sweet and gentle soul who is a good watchdog, we strongly felt the need for a dog who could be right in the pasture protecting the stock rather than on the perimeter.

We had a fox in our pasture this spring, and birds of prey started to discover our poultry. Then a couple of other farmers in the community lost stock recently - one lost 17 sheep and a livestock guardian to a grizzly in one night. 😱

Argos Embark tested as clear for everything except is a carrier for DM. (*not affected nor will any pups be affected but may be carriers)

We're hoping that Argos will choose to bond strongly with our stock when given some time to familiarize himself to his new job. {UPDATE: He HAS! :) } He's a love bug, loving nothing more than to lean on me, or roll over for a belly rub.We hope to, if the situation allows and Argos works out here as well as we expect him to, bring in a female Gampr at some point to breed to him.

Please contact us if you'd like to be on a wait list (& it will be a wait) so we know if this is something people would be interested in us pursuing.

Video 1 : Argos

Video 2 : Argos undergoing more supervised time with the goats. :)

Video 3 : Working on integrating Argos with our goats.

Video 4 : During the introduction stage of him to our other livestock guardian (Akbash), Beyza.

Video 5 : Beyza & Argos alerting to a side by side going by. I love this because it shows the quick reaction of these dogs when there's a possible threat. It's also why it's a good thing to have decent fences. :)

Video 6 : Argos and Laddie (one of our English Shepherds) learning to tolerate one another. I was even able to use Laddie to move the goats away from the hay feeder while we put a new bale in with the tractor without Argos trying to go through the fence (or over it) and he only barked a few times, stopping every time I told him to knock it off. Wonderful progress 💕

A Toothy Tale... Testament to Temperament & Trust

I just need to rave a bit about Argos.
He broke a tooth so had to have surgery to extract it Oct 4th. This was his first visit to the vet, and our first chance to see how he responds to not only new, but unpleasant experiences with strangers.

I have to say, he was impressive with his calm acceptance. After I told him the vet was ok, he submitted to a stranger helping me pick him up, put him on a table, clip his fur and then jab him (twice, due to a faulty sleeve) to put an IV into him. The vet & I were both very pleased with his show of such a trusting, stable temperament.

The tooth was a big canine one, so it was a very long procedure, and risky as a result.
The vet was astonished at just how long & strong the root was; in his many years of extracting teeth, he'd never seen such a big canine / root structure. This breed (& likely all broader headed LGDs) definitely has the physiology to match their job. Unfortunately, the root was seated backwards on top of two other teeth so we're going to have to watch those to see if they were damaged during the extraction or not; the vet thinks he probably killed one of the teeth because the two roots were less than 5mm apart... e
Thankfully, he came through it ok, and while he was groggy that night, he was back to his old self the folowing day :) Amazing! His mouth had to have been incredibly sore, but you'd never have known it! We gave giving him the prescribed pain killers, but they were only administered once / day.

We've shown the parts of his tooth that came out in chunks. The rest had to be ground out.

Anyway, this ordeal has further cemented my appreciation for and trust in this lovely boy. 💕

The saga continues... There is no way to put a cone on in such a way as to protect a mouth from licking. Argos managed to lick all his stitches out, leaving a gaping wound that gets food stuck in it. The vet was on holiday but even if he hadn't have been, he said the only thing that could be done was to let it fill in naturally. He monitored the situation via pictures and said that it was granulating well, which is a desirable thing.

In the meantime Argos' antibiotics were extended AND we were supposed to syringe an edible disinfectant into that area and scoop out any food it had collected, daily.

My first thought was, "yeah right!"

But Argos was good as gold!! He just laid down on his side and allowed me to syringe and scoop stuff out of there. He is such an amazing dog!!! 💕

When it came time for his next vet checkup, I was ill, so my husband ended up taking Argos to the vet for me. I was concerned because this was the second trip to the vet he's ever had here and I wasn't sure what he would have connected in regards to his first visit which was his surgery. Hubby said he was absolutely golden 💕💕💕

The vet had a look and, although it was a deep wound still, it was healing. The vet said that there was no bone infection, it was granulating well, and that the treatments we'd done with him had helped. Yay!! 🎉 (We often have to clean in the dark before or after work, so it's harder to tell the color of his gums at that point. But when I checked his mouth just prior to that visit in the daylight I did notice that the bright red inflammation had receded quite a bit since we started doing the flushing and scooping of material.)

So we're very thankful that there has been good progress. But we will all be so happy when he's healed!

I have to say that I've *never* had an easier dog to work with than this boy. And that's saying something, because I've been blessed with some pretty special dogs.

He's figured out that when we lead him over to the straw, we'll ask him to 'down' so we can do his mouth. Well, the other night he just voluntarily dropped onto the correct side so his injury was completely accessible. He laid totally still, and then enjoyed all the praise and belly rubs I dared give him once we were done. What an absolute joy. 💕💖💕

He came off the antibiotics on October 26th. We're still cleaning out and iodining the wound but it has decreased in size and no longer shows sign of infection. And he is still just so good about laying down and letting us do so. 💕

As of Nov 10, Argos' gum has filled in a lot. Just about done having to clean it out :)