I have unwanted mice in my house and also a very much wanted 13 year old terrier (who in his youth would’ve made short work of the mice, but he has slowed down a bit).
I want to get rid of the rodents without harming the dog. I don’t mind killing the little bastards, but I don’t want to use glue traps because I have used them in the past and you have to check them constantly and they damned near torture what they catch (which isn’t always dead when you find it). I’m more than willing to use poison or traps, but I don’t want to risk hurting my dog.
Best advice for getting rid of the mice without hurting the dog? I’d rather not have to call the exterminator as they are expensive and I’ve rarely had much success with them.
Get a new model rat terrier?
They are great mousers!
And entertaining.
Can you place snap traps somewhere accessible to mice but not your dog? That would be my first thought. If you can’t find such a spot, you could also check and remove traps in the morning, and replace them at night, keeping your dog excluded from the trapping area.
You can also get “pet safe” covered mousetraps, e.g., this one. Bit more $$.
Yeah, have a look around at places like Lowes & Home Depot. There are several better mouse traps out there that are more pet safe, easier to set, and less torture-chamberish, although they are more expensive. I’ve had good luck with the covered type traps, and there’s also one made by TomKat (?I think) that is kind of a dial shape–maybe called a spin trap? It is kind of pricey, so I usually use it if the mousies become wise to the covered traps.
yeah terriers are great … I had a snake that could be picky on its dinner rodents and the place that sold feeders would get rid of all the surplus expecting moms my selling them first … but didn’t say anything ot its customers so when my snake who wouldn’t eat brown mice didn’t want the preggo one I had stupid me kept it in the cardboard box … needless to say it was gone and we had mice …
Well mom had an extremely spry scottie dog and he hunted every mouse down for the next 2 months … he even tried going to the hole in the wall the rodents chewed opened
I think he caught them all because we didn’t have mice for years after
We have mice at work this time of year, and some of us bring our pets.
I set snap traps and cover each of them with a shoebox or smaller box with mouse-size holes cut out.
Get a terrier-friendly cat.
Have you tried blocking up the holes where the mice are getting in? Not always possible depending on the age/condition etc of the property, and the location (i.e. determining the rate of influx of new mice).
If you can find where they’re getting in, jamming the hole with stainless steel pan scourers loaded with epoxy will stop them reopening it.
Tomcat brand sells this killer poison with a little black box that the mice can get into, but dogs/cat cannot access the bait. You can leave in plan site, or where the mice are cruzin’.
Haven’t seen a mouse indoors in a long, long time. Might have something to do with the killer wiener dogs, though. They are only allowed in the back room, but the threat might be keeping them at bay.
And then the dog eats one or more of the poisoned mice…? Most compounds used in rodenticides are bioaccumulative, and have potential implications up the food chain.
It too bad you can’t borrow my dog he part terrier and he would have a field day going after the rodents. If you have any piles of yard trash near your house get rid of that fast ! I live in a condo and the groundkeeper were putting our yard trash right behind our condo, pile of rocks dead bushes were all piled up and I told them that is going attract rodents . They didn’t believe b/c I am a woman . I saw a neighbor’s cats sitting right next to the pile waiting for a mouse to come out and bingo the cat got it. My condo had made a nice little condo of the rodents !:smack:
We have cats that are useless at hunting mice so we use carefully-placed snap traps.
The best trap set up is to put a standard trap in an empty cereal box and set it along a wall. Mice like to follow wall edges. to keep a dog from getting to it cut the box down so it fits on the floor under the kitchen cabinet overhang. put something the dog can’t move in front of it.
The cost is the trap and your ingenuity.
If the mouse is getting in the cabinets then just put the box in the cabinet under the sink and shut the door.
For the first time ever, I have found myself with mice. I have 5 dogs and a cat and the cat will on occasion go after a random mouse; hell, about a month ago, she caught a baby mouse and brought it to me. Alive. I considered keeping him as a pet and decided against it, took him to a park and released him.
I put snap traps everywhere I have seen the little bastards. But man, they are smart… they eat the bait and RARELY do I catch anything. They love the dry cat food; I have gone above and beyond baiting the traps by taking thread and tying pieces of cat food to the trigger, with peanut butter covering the thread. Didn’t catch a single one that way. It’s frustrating.
There are a bunch of DIY mouse and rat traps on Youtube.
Some use snap action of some sort, some involve the free-spinning device mounted above a bucket of water.
Being a hard-ass, I used glue traps - the whole thing got tossed into the yard (idiot mouse managed to get all four paws PLUS its belly on the thing.
Let Nature take its course.
I also used bait and snap traps.
My best experience:
After one round of mouse killing, I put the poison traps under the sink - and found a mouse had chewed through the cardboard to get to the poison.
Somehow, that house attracted dumb mice…
I got a new cat, caught three mice in the first three days he was here.
Now he’s bored.
I found mixing the traps up worked best. It seems like once I caught a few the other mice got wise to that trap, so I’d switch to a different kind.
These http://www.tomcatbrand.com/smg/goprod/tomcat-press-n-set-mouse-trap/prod11200004?locale=en_US worked the best though. I used peanut butter cups as bait.
If you’re going to use sticky traps line some up in a row because mice will jump over them sometimes. I know they are cruel and for a long time I resisted using them, but after a while I just didn’t care anymore, I wanted the beasties dead and out of my house. I used the peanut butter scented sticky traps, but I’d put a little peanut butter cup in the middle. I also used the ones that can be folded to make a cover so I didn’t have to look at them. You can drown them, smash them, or I put them in a plastic bag and tied it up tight so they would suffocate pretty quickly.
Upgrade the terrier. Cyborg terrier. With frickin’ lasers.
Actually, that sounds both awesome and terrifying.
I have 2 indoor cats and 6 dogs and I’m having a mouse problem this year. The house is 170 years old - there’s no way to block all the possible entrances. I tried catch-and-release for a while, but the mice figured out the traps. Now I’m using snap traps. I hate killing the cute little things - if they’d live in the barn, instead, I’d leave them alone.
StG
yeah, I wouldn’t risk using poison indoors. even if your dog can’t access the box itself, that doesn’t mean it can’t be carried out. And since the rodenticides I’m familiar with are basically massive doses of blood thinners, it’s not a fun way to go.
I haven’t tried it, but an exterminator employee told me that the best bait was a piece of a Slim Jim (the nasty, greasy, sausage sold at Minute Marts.) It seems reasonable to me.