Training Anatolians: How to Train an Anatolian

barjohomestead
Jul 5
8 min read

Updated: Jul 6

“The only bad dog is an untrained dog” - Unknown. After owning Anatolians since 2016, we have learned that training can make or break a dog. In this article, we will be giving insight on 6 important topics when it comes to training Anatolians.

Bonding Importance

Bonding is important for 3 reasons; it creates partnership, gains respect, and delegates responsibility.

First off, bonding forms a relationship between you and your Anatolian. When you take time to spend with your puppy, you are building trust. Trust-building is important because it's the foundation for a healthy partnership where your dog strives to please you. Spending time with your puppy is also a great opportunity to learn about your dog’s personality.

Secondly, your dog will learn to respect you. Spending time with your puppy allows you to lay expectations for respectful behaviour. When your dog respects your boundaries, it shapes them into a more enjoyable dog. It teaches them to respect you as their boss and how to please you as your loyal employee.

Lastly, bonding will distinguish your dog’s role. Anatolians, by nature, need someone to love and guard with their lives. Whoever your dog spends the most quality time with will be perceived as their “flock”. If you desire your Anatolian to guard the livestock, it is crucial they spend plenty of time with the livestock, so they perceive them as “family”.

Obedience Training

Obedience training your Anatolian is important for 3 reasons: gains control, minimizes hazards, and simplifies daily life.

As you are probably aware, Anatolians mature to be very large dogs. Most Anatolians mature well over 100 pounds. Some Anatolians will mature to an astonishing weight of 180 pounds or more! Can you imagine not having control over a dog this big? It would be plain out hazardous, especially to small children or livestock.

This brings me to my next point: not having your Anatolian obedience trained is plain out dangerous. Anatolians can be stronger than the average person. Imagine taking your Anatolian for a walk, and it catches sight of something and drags you down the path and you're unable to regain control. In another instance, imagine your dog jumping up on a young child because it doesn’t know “off”. Or your dog escapes off the property and doesn’t respond to “come” because it was never taught it.

This is why obedience training makes daily life easier. Believe it or not, we use almost all of our obedience commands daily. Whether it’s having our dogs know how to “back” from a gate or “wait” for their food, all of these contribute to a safer and smoother process. Below, we’ve compiled a list of all the obedience commands we teach our Anatolians and why:

Sit: Helps to gain control of our dogs in an excitable situation.
(Lay) Down: Encourages our dogs to “stay” or refrain from jumping on someone/thing.
Stay: Extremely helpful when we leave gates/doors open and don’t want them coming out.
Leave It: When we want our dogs to not have/take something.
Wait: Prevent our dogs from bolting out of gates/doors and gain respect when it comes to food.
Come: This one is a must! We use this one every day for obvious reasons, but also INCREDIBLY helpful if/when a dog escapes from their pen.
Off: To get our dogs off a child or other person/animal.
Back: We use this one to have dogs back up from gates/doors that we need to enter.
Leash training: To comfortably take our dogs around the farm or in town.

Resource Guarding

Some key things to remember regarding research guarding (RG) are acceptable RG, preventing RG, and correcting RG.

First off, remember that RG is a good thing! RG is essentially when a dog guards something or one that is valuable to the dog. In other words, RG is the drive that fuels your dog to protect their “flock”. RG only isn't good when it goes too far and becomes aggression. In simple terms, RG is appropriate guarding of an appropriate thing (e.i. Guarding the sheep from coyotes or politely keeping livestock away from their food). Aggression on the other hand is inappropriate guarding of a thing (e.i. Guarding sheep from you, or growling, barking, lunging, or nipping to keep livestock away from their food).

Now that we’ve established RG vs aggression, it’s important to settle on boundaries and preventatives for both. Decide what is appropriate for your dog to protect and what behaviour is appropriate for your dog to protect. In other words, decide at what point your Anatolian is overstepping the boundary. Stay consistent with your expectations. Keep in mind that dogs most often guard food, space, and their “flock”. Figure out what preventative steps you can do on your end. For example, if your dog tries to steal food from the others, it is worth it to tie them up during feeding to prevent a fight. Furthermore, take the time to prevent aggression with training. This is especially important with food and people. Spend plenty of time touching your puppy's food while they are eating, etc. It is important to begin this early on. An Anatolian will get very large, it is much less intimidating doing this as a puppy rather than a full grown dog. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Sometimes, RG will overstep to aggression and it is crucial to nip it in the bud immediately. But knowing how to correct it can be a matter of success or disaster. Ideally, you will be able to detect aggressive behaviour before your pup actually acts on it. If you notice an escalation in tension in your dog, we would recommend redirecting their attention verbally. You can also try removing the resource from your dog’s access or removing the dog from the situation.

Livestock Guardian Training

Three key things to keep in mind when training Anatolians to be an LGD are: give freedom 1 inch at a time, prevent any foreseeable problems, and don’t trust your Anatolian too soon.

The most common mistake we've seen owners make while training their Anatolians is giving them unlimited freedom. This more times than not, results in a disaster as the developing dog can’t manage freedom correctly. It is so, so important to begin your Anatolian with just an inch of freedom. Slowly increase the freedom inch by inch as they prove themselves to you. An example of this could be training your dog to poultry. It would be unwise to give your puppy free access to the poultry straight off the bat. Rather start with keeping both poultry and puppy on opposite sides of the fence. From there- put your pup on a leash and stay stationary within the bounds of poultry. Continually teach your puppy how to behave around poultry. Maybe then graduate to walking around the pen on a leash. You get the idea- slowly, but surely your pup will be at the point where it can be trusted without supervision.

Secondly, prevent any foreseeable problems before you need to correct them. It is far easier to prevent rather than correct! In other words, if your puppy sends signals they might chase livestock, prevent that ASAP. It is easier to prevent than deal with the consequences, like injuries or bad habits. Redirecting your puppy’s attention is also a valuable tool. If your puppy looks like it might pounce on a chicken or lamb, redirecting their attention can save you from a possible disaster.

Lastly, don’t trust your Anatolian too soon. Keep tabs on them 24/7 until you are absolutely positive they can handle themselves. It’ll often take 2-3 years to get to this point, so remain patient and encouraged! Anatolians often deceive many novice owners because of their fast physical maturity. At only 4 months old, they can be around 60 pounds and at a year, they are often over 100 pounds. Despite their physical maturity, it takes longer for their mental maturity to catch up. So while they might appear full grown, mentally they still think and act like a pup. Continually give your Anatolian direction and training until they’ve proven themselves trustworthy.

Boundary Training

Three things that have helped owners enforce and teach boundaries are; give freedom inch by inch, use tools to your advantage, and prevent bad behaviour before it begins.

As we mentioned earlier, a big mistake Anatolian owners make is giving their dogs too much freedom off the hop. This results in issues because your puppy doesn’t know how to handle freedom. It’s no different than children. You would never leave a 3-year-old home alone because they haven't learned how to act in that situation. Rather, give your Anatolian more freedom once they prove they can handle more freedom. Furthermore, they should be acting responsibly with their current freedom. If at any point bad behaviour begins, take a step back and correct the problem before continuing.

Many wonderful tools on the market are a great benefit while training Anatolians. We would strongly encourage you to look into them and use them to your benefit. For example, shock collars are a decent tool to use when correcting bad behaviour. Most shock collars come with a warning system. This reminds your dog to change their behaviour immediately to avoid the consequence. Another great option, specifically when training property boundaries, is GPS trackers. These are great for keeping tabs on your dog and easily locate your dog if they ever step outside the boundary. Zip Lines are also an amazing option when introducing Anatolians to livestock. Since they restrict dogs to a specific area, owners can prevent and correct problems.

Anticipating and preventing behavioural issues is also a key concept while teaching boundaries. A great way to prevent misbehaviour is incorporating tools, like the ones we mentioned above. Another way to prevent overstepping boundaries is removing temptations to overstep the boundary. What we mean by this is to avoid putting your dog in an excitable situation or tempting situation. For example, if you don’t want your dog to jump out of its pen, make sure an enforcer (like hotwire) is in place (and turned on). Or avoid allowing your puppy free access to a pen of playful lambs. This removes the temptation of playing with them. Another thing to remember is that boredom often leads to misconduct. Simply spending time with your dog through walks, training, etc. works wonders to keep your puppy’s mind busy and avoid boredom.

Emergency Training

Lastly, prepare and train your dog for an emergency by exposing them to vehicles, buildings, and life off the farm.

It is crucial your Anatolian can load in and out of vehicles with ease. In the case of an emergency, you don't have the time to wrestle a 160-pound dog into your car. Start while they are 20 pounds. Regularly load and unload them from various vehicles. Furthermore, establish the vehicle as a safe and fun place. Teach them that vehicles equal going to a fun place. Avoid potentially traumatizing situations the first couple of rides.

Even if you don't intend to allow your dog in buildings it is still important for them to enter willingly. Practice entering various buildings on your property. From there, practice entering buildings with various following types. Often flooring like tile will spook our dogs and deter them from entering a building. Another great building to practice entering and exiting is the vet. This is likely the building you will have to enter in an emergency and you absolutely need your dog to enter and remain chill within the clinic.

Finally, teach your dog to behave off your property. Expose your dog to various people. Teach them how to act when a stranger is approaching and interacting with them. Have your dog cooperate when people handle their food- especially kids. Make sure your dog remains cool and collected in various situations. Make sure you can touch your dog everywhere without them protesting. Bathe them from time to time to teach them how to stay calm in an uncomfortable situation. Expose them to confinement. Whether that's cooperating in a kennel, or small room, or simply holding them in your arms, your dog must learn to be ok and remain calm with it.

We hope this encouraged and helped any inspiring Anatolian owners. Regardless of what training method you choose, beginning early, and staying consistent and firm with it is key to an easier training experience.

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