With the ongoing Mongolian parliament elections, preparations for ASEM (Asia/ Europe meeting) and the upcoming Naadam festival, it has been a hectic  few weeks for all of Mongolia. The MBDP has been busy keeping up with the health of our dogs. Along with Baavgai's eye surgery, Red Scarf has gotten blisters Along her ears, Blimpy needed to have some dread locks brushed out, the pups needed dewormer and khuder needed to be vaccinated. At first, the thought of vaccinating khuder was more then a little frightening, and not because I had never administered a vaccination. Khuder was previously owned by a local, who had raised him to be a ferocious dog that wanted to shred and murder everything and anything that came within earshot. Here is a picture from several months ago...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/soyolbold/16403111035/in/album-72157650146319720/#


We have since adopted Khuder for breeding as he is a spectacular looking dog with perfect confirmation and athletic build. We strongly believed we could rehabilitate him to be a social friendly dog. The first change we made was to take him off his chain and give him a fenced off area
to run around in. Eventually we began to see his behavior change as I spent more and more time with him. Simply by acting confident and calm around Khuder, and using positive reinforcement when he showed appropriate behavior he quickly softened his gaze towards people. After consistently seeing no aggression and only signs that he wanted to socialize, I was ready interact face to face.

And here he is, a lovable goofy dog that loves to play and occasionally becomes ferocious towards strangers and the other male dogs.

We may never be able to trust him completely with strangers or those who do not respect dog behavior, but I feel totally confident around him myself. Khuder is an intelligent dog who I've learned to trust but I also respect certain boundaries and know not to get between him and someone he isn't fond of. Given some safety precautions, Vaccinating him was no problem at all, in fact he was better behaved than our other dogs. Soon I will be ready to take him out on lead for a run, hopefully to burn 

off some of his excess energy. And before I leave for the US, we will socialize him with his breeding pair. 

I will also try to get a height and weight for Khuder next visit. He is likely our largest dog, giving Baavgai a run for his money.

Besides that, we have set up our second ger for Greg and Baagii to live in. We posted some official looking informative signs around our property...

And we are on the grid! Outfitted our caretakers ger with a solar system to power his fridge, Tv and satellite dish. His whole family was thrilled to have tv and lights once again. Coming from the city, they were happy to be living in the countryside, but they probably missed the luxuries of the city like electricity. 

The whole family, 6 kids included gathered around the tv to watch Mongolian Elvis Presley.

 Except for Batkhilden...