This is my first post ....so here goes. I have a 2 yr old golden lab who came to us at 10 months from another home (she was just too much for them and they had not bonded with her, which us why they said she needed to be re homed) She is a great dog loads of energy etc. fun to be with and we love her to bits. We have however struggled with her training and recall, she seems to go deaf! Anyway, quite often, at least once per month, when we are out she finds dead animals such as rabbits and squirrels - I have never seen her actually kill one, I tend to think she finds recently dead ones, but cannot be sure. The problem then arises, she will not, under any circumstances let go of these animals,she runs away, if we get near she clamps her jaws tightly shut and will not open then for anything, including treats. I have tried to drag them out of her mouth and usually end up with half a rabbit in my hand. Basically she then runs away somewhere and eats the animal. It's horrible, and I worry about her health, digestive system etc Also if I am honest I worry that she might one day come across a cat and try to do the same. Does anyone have any experience of this? I don't want to put a muzzle on her because it's not every walk this happens on, and I don't want other owners and their dogs to think she is a nasty dog who wears a muzzle. Any thoughts? Thank you for reading x
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Hello, and thanks for joining us here! There are lots of people here who have all sorts of experiences with Labs, and I'm sure you will get lots of advice. I have to say that your dog sounds like the typical food-obsessed Lab. My pooch is not necessarily finding dead animals on walks but he certainly finds every scrap of garbage there is, and if it has any kind of food value, he will certainly eat it. The only thing that worked for me was training the "leave it" command. I did this using a clicker and high value treats...when he looked at a tasty treat and strained at the leash towards it, we would wait (sometimes a long time, initially), for him to look away, and when he did, click and treat. (if you haven't done clicker training there are articles on the main site which will help you). Eventually he got the idea that look away=a treat. Then we would add the cue, "leave it". I combined that with swapping items at home for treats. Both of these eventually combined together so that when we are out on walks and he finds something, when I say "leave it" he will usually drop it and get a treat. I say "usually" because if he gets his jaws on something particularly tasty this isn't going to work. And then I get the jaws of steel too. In the main I generally let him have it then. It's really not worth the difficulty in getting it away. In our case, our dog was re homed with us at about the same age as yours, he came to us with resource/food guarding issues. I have done a lot of work with him in getting him to trust that we won't take away "special" items from him so I don't want to force things. So...it's a bit of a draw, sometimes. For example, today, he found two meatballs on the street on the walk...which happened to be threaded on a pointy wooden skewer. He got his choppers on those meatballs and I grabbed the stick part which was sticking out of his mouth....I didn't care about the meatballs but the pointy stick But he wouldn't give it up. I tried to break the stick, not much success. He ended up eating the stick. We were almost home, so when I got in I gave him some bread to cushion the pointy stick in his gut and am sending up prayers to the Lab guardian angel that it will all be okay. I have found that as soon as the dog knows that you want the item he has it immediately makes it even MORE valuable in his mind. So sometimes the best strategy is to ignore, rather than make a fuss. But sometimes you just can't help it, like if they have something dangerous. So it's tricky. Anyway, hope this helps. To help with the recall, I would recommend Total Recall, which is the book written by this site's founder, Pippa Mattitnson. It's a great book which lays out what to do, step by step, for puppies and adult dogs. Keep us posted, and good luck!
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Hi there and welcome to the forum. I'm sure we all understand this problem - I too well remember having to drag my 8-month old puppy out of the innards of a dead deer!!! But to put your mind at rest a little - dogs are scavengers and will eat anything. A dead squirrel or mouse won't do her any harm - although a rat or whatever that has been poisoned is another story, of course. So until you have the 'leave it' command down pat, I would keep her on a lead near farms or anywhere there is a danger of her picking up any vermin that may have been poisoned. As for a dead rabbit or squirrel - if she does eat it, it won't do her any real harm, but it is important to keep her worming up to date. What is your dog's name?
Re: Catching and eating wildlife It's quite easy to train "leave it" with food. Leave it as in don't put the food in your mouth in the first place. Because you can control the food. But to train "give it to me" or "drop" once the dog has something he views as food actually in his mouth is much, much harder. You have to train with food, which is hard. If you haven't trained your dog to give you a dead animal that he sees as food in the circumstances, and he already has it in his mouth, he won't. It's the difference between training a dog to "leave" a sausage on the floor - quite straightforward, and training the dog to pick up the sausage and then give it to you before he eats it - much harder. My dog will not, on cue, give me something he intends to eat, eg it is food (not just something he is going to chew) once it is in his mouth. If you can get hold of the dog, you can put one hand on top of his mouth, and one underneath and open his mouth with his head pointing towards the floor., which will allow the food to fall out of his mouth. I use this in an absolute emergency if my dog has something dangerous. This doesn't alarm him, and he doesn't resource guard, so it's a safe thing to do with my dog, but I can imagine it's not a safe thing to do with every dog. Otherwise, it's a Magic Word, which has worked for us: http://www.thelabradorsite.com/your-labradors-magic-word/
Re: Catching and eating wildlife This is all great advice. I'd just add one thing - I really, really would not worry about your dog actually killing anything - certainly not a cat. Others will know more than me, but I am absolutely sure your dog is just scavenging things that are already dead - which is very normal (if disgusting!) labrador behaviour. I think a labrador chasing and killing would be very rare (and unheard of in the case of a cat). Chase, yes! Kill.....no. Do other people agree with me?
Re: Catching and eating wildlife I've read that domestic dogs usually don't have the final stages of the predatory sequence (bite, kill, consume) but Labradors have strong chase and capture (that's what we harness to get them to be good retrievers). My dog shakes things he "catches". Thankfulky limited to canvas dummies only! And he is such a wimp he would back off from any animal that stood its ground. But if he didn't, his shake action would do serious damage to a small animal, and most probably kill it. Dogs are certainly dogs...it's worth keeping a close eye on every dog, I reckon. The OP might want to have her dog stay within a range that she can see it, perhaps, so she knows what going on?
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Poppy kills and eats mice, and I am certain she would kill the squirrel that comes into our garden, if she could catch it.
Re: Catching and eating wildlife I cant add to the excellent advice but i think it's important to be up to date with worming your dog if they scavenge. Best of luck
Re: Catching and eating wildlife [quote author=bbrown link=topic=9662.msg139640#msg139640 date=1422271320] I cant add to the excellent advice but i think it's important to be up to date with worming your dog if they scavenge. Best of luck [/quote] Absolutely. With the amount of goat poo mine are getting through at the moment, I've just had a quick double-check on when they're due their wormer! Sunday it is!
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Lisa/Karen/Julie/Rosie/Bbrown/snow bunny Thank you all so much for your encouraging remarks and great advice. Its very much appreciated. It's good to know she is not completely off the scale as far as Labradors are concerned. And so relieved re the cat concern I have! Yes! She is very food motivated, which can be good in terns of training and treats but not so good when she hoovers up everything in her path remotely food like. And not food like ..... Thanks for your advice about embedding the "leave it" command too, I know that her training and "leave" command is not strong enough - she goes completely deaf once she sees/scents something she likes the smell of. We have just got the total recall book, after a couple of different classes and trainers who all gave good advice, she is just a stubborn cookie at times so we need to persevere and my husband is working through it with her. The only thing is that the book advises training with only one person to start with which means at the moment I am not doing the training with her (unless we have read it wrong!) Karen - thanks for asking, should have said, my dog's name is Lottie ! Thank you so much.
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Welcome to the forum from us, Hattie 7 years and our rescue boy Charlie 4 years. I have lost track of all the rotting animals especially Hattie has eaten so I do keep their worming up to date as suggested. If I am in time a "leave it" is usually enough! Lottie sounds just normal and lovely xx Helen xx
Re: Catching and eating wildlife [quote author=Karen link=topic=9662.msg139635#msg139635 date=1422269533] Poppy kills and eats mice, and I am certain she would kill the squirrel that comes into our garden, if she could catch it. [/quote] Ha! Shows how much I know (not)!
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Just catching up on Forum action today,welcome from Dexter and I ....my 2 year old yellow boy.....I wouldn't fancy the chances of anything small and furry that Dexter managed to get his jaws on.....I limit his access ie he only comes across cats when he is on lead ( we live in Dubai) so we have yet to encounter squirrels,rabbits and mice .....oh my! If he is by me,I have a good leave it with dead wildlife and bones from decaying carcasses we find in the desert....and he will bring bones to me on his recall whistle and drop them at my feet after we concentrated on the clicker trained retreive last summer .unfortunately We are NOT so good with old pack lunch items that people discard...he found some Pitta bread and old biryani in a bush about 3 months ago....he still launches gleefully at that bush if I'm not concentrating when we walk past ...you've got to admire a Labrador's optimism ;D
Re: Catching and eating wildlife [quote author=JulieT link=topic=9662.msg139619#msg139619 date=1422261883] But to train "give it to me" or "drop" once the dog has something he views as food actually in his mouth is much, much harder. You have to train with food, which is hard. [/quote] Btw, one of my fave clicker vids of all time is Donna Hill teaching a dog to deliver a hotdog to hand. When I retire from work, I'm going to do this! Neat party trick... http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5LYvJYDfrr0
Re: Catching and eating wildlife I know, Julie, that vid haunts me... . The phrase "never in a million years" comes to mind....although I do have a pretty good "leave it" from kibble placed on paws and (new!) on his muzzle...
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Oh, I reckon I could do it in two years, if I didn't have anything else whatsoever to do... ;D
Re: Catching and eating wildlife [quote author=Rosie link=topic=9662.msg139622#msg139622 date=1422263242] I'd just add one thing - I really, really would not worry about your dog actually killing anything - certainly not a cat. Others will know more than me, but I am absolutely sure your dog is just scavenging things that are already dead - which is very normal (if disgusting!) labrador behaviour. I think a labrador chasing and killing would be very rare (and unheard of in the case of a cat). Chase, yes! Kill.....no. Do other people agree with me? [/quote] I agree. Some dogs will want to chase, catch and then kill. But most Labradors would chase, corner the animal and then think 'oh, what now?'. My first Lab was a terrible cat chaser. Normally mild mannered, when he saw a cat he became a slavering, bellowing hell-hound. Many times he chased, and a few times he cornered. Then there was just frenzied, high-volume barking till we could rescue the terrified, spitting kitty. You'd swear he wanted to kill those cats when he saw them, but he never touched them when he had the chance. I was more worried about him being scratched in the eyes, actually. There was one occasion where he chased a mangy feral cat into some very tall grass in a big field near out house. He and the cat disappeared. Then reappeared, with the cat riding on my dog's head and reaching for his eyeballs. Luckily, when the cat saw me it executed an emergency dismount. The scavenging is totally normal too.....if the other forum dogs could read your post they'd be applauding Lottie for her sterling efforts!
Re: Catching and eating wildlife Thank you everyone, for the great advice and making me smile too at the antics of your dogs! I have checked her worming is up to date and at least I know that Lottie's scavenging, chasing anything furry, eating anything rotting and generally getting into mischief is normal ! Oh - did I mention she also has a penchant for eating paper too, especially money - the paper kind - so we have to watch out for the £20 in the kids birthday cards when they come through the letter box! Well to be honest anything that comes through the letter box is fair game....
