Labrador Retrievers Herd a Different Kind of Livestock

The dogs pace the banks eagerly. They yelp in anticipation. They paw the ice gingerly and bark madly as their quarry scatters in every direction.

Finally, on cue from their owner, they plunge into the water and begin their task: herding thousands of darting, shimmering trout.

Their names are Kayla and Maggie. At the Beaverkill Trout hatchery in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, where the Shavers have been trout farming for generations, they are known as the world’s only trout-herding dogs.

“C’mon Kayla, c’mon Maggie,” owner Lisa Shaver cries, wading hip-deep through the pond in a neoprene jumpsuit, pushing the ice aside so the dogs can work better. Behind her she drags a 60-foot net with weights on the bottom and floats on top.

The trout take off in a frenzy in the other direction--goldens, rainbows, brooks and browns. Determinedly, the two Labrador retrievers swim after them, one on each side of the pond, corralling the school, driving it toward the net. As they do, Shaver pulls the two ends of the net together, tightening it into a large floating noose of glistening, leaping fish.

The dogs paddle furiously around the edge, heads bobbing in the water, ready to catch any trout that try to escape.

“They are doing what they love, which is to swim and herd and retrieve,” Shaver says. “And they are cutting our work time in half.”

The hatchery is a sprawling 250-acre complex of ponds and channels, barns and buildings set in the deeply wooded Beaverkill valley. The Shavers, who also own a hatchery in Tunkhannock, Pa., hatch and raise about 500,000 trout a year, selling 150,000 to stock rivers and ponds all over New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Shaver, 31, lives on the farm with her husband and three children in the house that once belonged to her great-grandparents. A few yards away is the pale blue house where her parents, Betty and Gary, live and where she grew up. Her grandmother, sister and brother also live on the property. Everyone works the trout farm, especially in the busy season in spring and summer.

Kayla, a black Lab, is a veteran. Shaver first noticed her herding tendencies as a puppy, when she would dive into the ponds during the busy season and happily swim alongside the crew. It didn’t take long to realize she was better at the job than most humans. Now 13, Kayla has been herding trout most of her life. She works with the skill and pride of a pro.

The dog world has rarely seen anything like her.

“Amazing,” says Bill Speck, vice president for performance events for the American Kennel Club and a former breeder and judge of Labs. “I’ve heard of taking Labs duck hunting, and they can be good at herding livestock--but trout!”

Kayla’s old bones are beginning to ache, and soon it will be time to retire. Last year she began training her successor, Maggie, a playful, rambunctious, 2-year-old yellow Lab.

Maggie took to her task with all the exuberance of youth, although, on this particular December morning, she’s a bit spooked by the ice. Shaver has to coax and plead with her to get her into the water.

Corralling is only part of the dogs’ job. They also help control the fish as they are individually scooped up in small hand nets and “graded”--measured along a floating yardstick. Orders are usually for several hundred or more of a specific number of fish of a specific size, say 500 11-inch brooks (price: $260 per hundred). Fish that are too small or too large get chucked back into the pond. Those that never make the grade wind up in the fishing pond in the front of the farm, where weekend anglers pay a small fee to catch them.

“Look at this beauty, what a dream,” Shaver exclaims, cradling a 20-inch rainbow, its silvery pinkish hue gleaming down its side.

The trout is too large for this particular order, so, reluctantly, she throws it back. Before it reaches the water Kayla catches it gently in her mouth, holding it a second before dropping it into the pond. Labradors have soft mouths and loving natures, so the fish are never injured by the dogs.

A golden trout darts from the net, zigzagging toward the chute, where water flows from the neighboring pond.

“The chute, Maggie. Up the chute,” Shaver cries.

Maggie hesitates for a moment, eyeing the ice from the bank. Then she’s off, bounding into the water, paddling toward the basin beneath the chute, nudging the errant fish back into the pond.

“Good girl, Maggie, good girl.”

High from the branches of a big old cherry tree, two bald eagles watch the scene. As soon as the dogs are gone, they’ll swoop down for a meal, taking their choice from the 36 ponds. The birds devour one or two trout a day--with the blessing of the Shavers.

“They are so beautiful,” Shaver says, “how could you refuse?”

Black bears are another matter. Unlike bald eagles, bears are gluttons, destroying everything in sight to get to their grub.

They became such a nuisance that, several years ago, the Shavers designed a “have-a-heart” bear trap--an enormous metal box with a door that springs shut when a bear enters. To lure the bears into the trap, the Shavers stock it with Dunkin’ Donuts Boston Creme doughnuts--the treat the bears like best. The trap catches five or six bears a year, usually at night. Bears that venture near the ponds during the day are chased away by the dogs. Those that are caught are sedated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and released back into the wild.

Other hazards of trout farming include robins that steal the baby fish, bobcats and the occasional lynx. There are also annual threats from flooding, power failures, the difficulty of finding help, and the seasonal whims of the business.

It’s a tough way to make a living, and most of the Shavers work other jobs part time. Betty Shaver, the hatchery bookkeeper, also works in a Chevrolet dealership in Roscoe. Lisa Shaver works as a civilian aide with the state police in Liberty. Gary Shaver works in the lumber trade when he’s not trucking trout to private fishing clubs.

Kayla and Maggie work full time on the farm, herding trout from dawn to dusk for about nine months of the year--from March to the end of November. They get a few months’ reprieve in winter.

On this December day, the dogs shake off the icicles dripping from their coats and finish up gratefully after about an hour. A short time later they are snug in their special foam beds, warming up beside the wood stove in Shaver’s house.

By the time the busy season rolls around again, the Shavers hope to have even more dogs on the farm. They hope that Maggie will get pregnant. They plan to raise a whole new generation of trout-herding dogs.