Armed Forces Pest Management Board

Technical Information Bulletin - January - February 1996

Defense Pest Management Information Analysis Center
Armed Forces Pest Management Board
Forest Glen Section, Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Washington, DC 20307-5001

NATURAL RESOURCES

Environmentally Friendly Geese Control - Geese stories on golf courses are as numerous as tips about putting techniques. Geese think of greens as lunch and water hazards as bathtubs. Some courses have literally thousands of the huge, territorial waterfowl. Their droppings turn the greens into muck and clog up mowers. Superintendents have tried chasing them with utility vehicles, draping rope across ponds, and scaring them with a variety of noisemakers from fireworks to cannons -- and even shotguns in more remote locales. None of those solutions is popular with the neighbors or the golfers. But fittingly from the hills of Scotland, whence golf came, comes an environmentally safe solution which has become immensely popular -- trained Border collies. Known worldwide for their superb herding abilities, these dogs are being used to make the goose vamoose.

Border collies have been bred for their herding abilities and intelligence for hundreds of years. Properly trained, they can move geese to the rough, keep them in the pond or scuttle them off to adjacent property. "If the dog is taught that the pond is the geese's pasture, then he will put them there. If he's taught that the swampy area of the rough is where they belong, he puts them there," says one prominent breeder. "To him, they're his livestock and you are his shepherd. You say, 'That'll do,' and that tells him the geese are where you want them." The collies have been known to move geese even in locations where nothing else has worked. Unlike noise makers and other mechanical means, the dogs remind geese of a natural enemy. "To the geese, he is a fox. He is a predator. If the dog comes out twice a day, their little goose minds record two foxes. Three times a day, three foxes. It doesn't take much to persuade the geese that this is just not a good place to settle and raise a family." Trained Border collies use their eyes and feet to herd their quarry. The dog runs to position itself in front of the animals, and then it gives them a look known as "the eye." Rather than face the dog's gaze, the stock -- be it sheep, cattle or geese -- turn away. The eye is the tool the Border collie uses to intimidate stock into directional movement. The dogs use "the eye" on geese to herd them and keep them moving until they leave the area. Border collies do not bite or catch geese. In most cases, the birds fly off long before the dog gets that close. In any case, the Border collie's natural instinct is to herd, not harm, and it will only nip a goose in self-defense. Some sheep herders' Border collies are even taught to hold the leg of a lamb gently in their teeth until the shepherd arrives to give it medical treatment or a vaccination.

The goose-herding process on a golf course must be controlled by the handler whether that is the superintendent or an assistant. Border collies respond to simple verbal and hand commands. The dogs can learn a variety of words and phrases, enabling the handler to command them to jump into a golf car or get in a kennel, as well as herd geese. Trainers and superintendents report that these collies can learn to do practically anything. Border collies need to work to be happy. One breeder warns how important work is to their temperaments. "Most Border collies are obsessed with their herding nature," she says. "They need exercise, a focus, a goal. If you just put your Border collie in your apartment and leave it alone, you will have a very unhappy dog." Another breeder cautions that Border collies "will find something to do if you don't give them something to do." Tales abound of the dogs getting into all kinds of mischief, including pushing all the house plants in a home into the center of one room, operating an automatic golf ball dispenser, and leaping a kennel fence to join in a children's camp-out. "You don't want to leave these dogs loose," agrees a breeder and owner. "They're not yard dogs, they're working dogs. They try to get in front of anything to herd it, whether it is a cat or a goose."

Praise of Border collies abounds. "There's just no comparing Duke [a Border collie] to the things I've tried over the years. Everything they told us has worked better than we imagined it would. This by far exceeded our expectations," says one gold course superintendent. "We had 650 geese a day before, now we have no geese at all. Some will try to come in, but not for long..." One golf course also has ducks that the membership enjoys. Border collies can be trained to leave them alone. From a public relations point of view, the Border collie is described as "worth every penny."

This information was extracted from an article that also includes a list of breeders and trainers and sources for more information on trained Border collies.