TOLEDO, Ohio —
It's the season of goose attacks in northwest Ohio.
Geese lay their eggs and start nesting in March. They become territorial of their nests, leading to potential goose attacks.
Ohio Geese Control humanely removes geese by using border collies, introducing them as a predator to the birds' environment.
"It shows the geese that this is not a good place to make a nest, to hang out, to reside," said Katie Bollinger, Toledo account manager for Ohio Geese Control. "The border collies kind of encourage them out to the natural wetlands where they're supposed to go."
OGC is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
"One of the owners of the company, Jeff, started off in the golf business," Bollinger said. "They use them on the golf courses and he realized that was applicable to many other places, and so he kind of started from the ground up and built everything. It was him and his dog Nick and they continued on the company. Now we're all over Ohio."
The company has around 40 border collies throughout the state, with three working in Toledo. The dogs have different routes that take them to different properties multiple times a day.
If someone encounters a geese, Bollinger said they should make themselves bigger.
"Don't run," she said. "They will absolutely go after you that way. You just kind of want to make yourself bigger. If you have something like an umbrella, a briefcase, something like that you can use that as a barricade between your body and the goose, but try and give them a wide berth."
Bollinger said the geese don't want to fight you, they just want to defend their nests. If there is an issue with geese, people can contact OGC to come out with the border collies.
The company works with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to manage the state's goose population. Bollinger said there has been a 14% increase in the Canada Goose population over the past few years. She said the geese are adaptable, and some aren't migrating south due to the winters being milder.
Bollinger said people should not feed geese things like bread, either, because it will encourage them to stay and potentially cause health issues.
"Our biggest concern is the safety of the geese, the safety of the dogs, and just making sure that we can all cohabitate the way we're supposed to," Bollinger said. "Geese aren't supposed to be making nests out of rubber gloves and wrappers and things like that, as we find when they're in urban areas, so if we can move them back to nature where they're supposed to be it's just a better life for the geese and for us."