My English Springer Spaniel is amazing! Yesterday, he did something weird. Two baby squirrels had fallen out of their nest-they were barely 4 inches long! Buddy picked them up in his mouth, and put them on the lawn. He then stood guard over them! The parents were up in the tree, chattering like mad. Buddy stayed with them until my wife took him away, and the squirrel parents came down and retreived their offspring.
Why would ahunting dog do such a thing? It is almost as if he thought they were his puppies.
Amazing dog, that Buddy!
He may have recognized that they were helpless, and if he’s never equated squirrels with food/prey, he just saw “fellow creature in need.”
Dogs do have an incredible amount of empathy. That’s why they can tolerate us humans.
Oh Buddy, what a nice boy you are!
Give him some scritches for me.
Springers are a soft-mouthed breed. They are breed and trained to hold things gently, retrieve game with damaging it (obviously, hunters want to be able to eat their kills once the dog has retrieved it). A springer will point game, flush it and retrieve the dead game, which is probably what Buddy thought he was doing. He is obviously of much more value to the world than that other springer, Jerry.
StG
We had a very soft-mouthed golden retriever who usually had a stuffed animal in her mouth; one day she managed to catch a field mouse (that the cat had brought into the living room, then got bored with chasing) in her mouth, and was MOST upset when my husband managed to get the poor soggy, half-drowned thing out. That was HER mouse that she had retrieved! Silly dog!
Good job, Buddy!
Of course, not all dogs are so soft-hearted. One of the traumas of my youth occurred when I was about five, and our cat had just produced a litter. I took one of the tiny, newborn kittens out to show our dog, and before I could react, the dog lapped the kitten up out of my hand and swallowed it whole!
I remember screaming and crying, begging my mother to cut open the dog’s stomach to get the kitty out. (I knew the doctors had cut my mother’s stomach to get me out when I was born, so it made sense at the time.) The dog lay passively, wagging her tail while I wailed. Never felt the same about that dog, I’ll tell ya.