Rocklone, could you share pictures (if the OP doesn't mind pics of everybody's dogs would be fun.) I'm particularly interested in the Lurcher cross. I read about them in James Harriet's "All Creatures Great and Small" series of vet books. I've always been curious as to what they look like, as we don't have an equivalent here in the States.
Even though I have 3 dogs here, I have no reliable livestock dogs.
Lucky is a Jack Russell Terrier. Everything that isn't equine, feline or canine is for killing. I don't even spank her anymore if she kills a chicken--hunting is too much in her nature and it just makes both of us feel terrible. I've tried all the training techniques with her that I can. She can't overcome genetics, so I have to take on the responsibility of keeping her closely supervised when I let her off leash. I keep her obedience skills sharpened and am hoping to get an obstacle course built this winter. Hopefully, being worked will help alleviate some of her desire to hunt barnyard stock.
Penny is a Dutch Shepherd mix. She has a very soft temperament and mouth. However, soft temperament leads to underestimation of just how SHARP she is mentally. Of my three she is the most aware, intuitive and just plain SCARY SMART. One example: I need to tie her to a tree with her leash while I did whatever it was. Imagine my amazement when I turned around and caught her untying the knot with her teeth!! She had reared up onto her hind legs, had her front paws on the tree and her lips pulled back with that knot ever so gently between her incisors, and just worrying it back and forth. It took her less than two minutes to get it loose. Seeing this was just another proof of how she figures things out. I'd learned about tying someone too close to her previously, when she let someone else loose. I'd thought neighbors must be turning my dogs loose, since I'd tied her and Guacho (pronounced WAH-choh) close enough together to play without getting tangled up. I found Guacho running loose about 20 minutes later. I THOUGHT one of the neighbors must have unclipped him, since he had his collar on and his lead was just there in the dust. This happened a couple of times before I caught Penny in the act of unclipping him. I don't know how she can hold the bolt clip between her teeth and operate the snap but she does. She is very soft mouthed, always taking things from the hand very delicately. The birds kind of wander in and out of her territory at will. The worst she does to them is ninja kick them. (She's very handy with both front and hind feet...hence the "Ninja Dog" nickname.) They even lay eggs in her dog house!
Guacho is.....well.....Guacho. He's a muscular mixed breed of either Rottweiler or Pit Bull ancestry. He was dropped off at our old place the week before we moved, and came along here. He's pretty sweet tempered, the youngest of my bunch by about 9 months or so. He's just at a year old, and I'm very behind on getting him neutered. Every time I think I have the money saved to get him done, we need it for something more pressing. As he's just getting to be about a year old, I'm concerned about the puberty fairy leading him off into misadventures. My girls are spayed so that's a help. At any rate, he is aware of the poultry and will run after them if they wander into his space, but he's not adamant about killing them like Lucky is. If he did knosh on one, I think he'd just smoosh it by playing. He's the least complicated of my three. Pretty simple, fairly eager to please and surprisingly light on the lead. He reminds me of a joke my brother told me when he was in Marines Basic Training:
The military had recently implemented group punishment. (If one guy messes up, he isn't reprimanded alone because that would be too harsh. So everybody had to run or do push-ups or whatever.) Anyway, there was a big Mid-Western recruit, built like an ox who enjoyed lifting his buddies to show off his muscles. But he couldn't seem to master the most basic of maneuvers. When marching, he was always out of step. Couldn't do turns without tripping over his own two feet. And when it came to disassembling and reassembling his weapon......it was disastrous!! One morning, after falling down at least 15 times while out on the run, and then loosing three parts to his weapon while cleaning it, his Drill Sargent had enough. "Fall in!!" he screamed. "You recruits are going to do sit-ups until that recruit either gets it together or my abdomen hurts too much to do any more sit-ups!!" Then he had the Mid-western recruit move to the front of the formation to lead the exercise. With each sit-up he had to lead the cadence with:
"STRONG LIKE BULL *sit-up* SMART LIKE TREE *sit-up* STRONG LIKE BULL *sit-up* SMART LIKE TREE *sit-up*"
That's kind of how Guacho is. LOL
Guess I need to go out and get pictures now, so y'all can put faces to the names.