Maybe GQ, but perhaps personal experiences would be more enlightening. Though dogs love to chase small woodland creatures, have you ever seen a domesticated dog actually catch a squirrel?
Sorta.
My cousin’s german shepard caught the elusive squirrel by its tail. The tail was pulled clean off and the dog trotted back to the house carrying it.
The squirrel still taunted the dog for a long time.
Our dog caught a lame squirrel whose busted leg made him too slow to get away. Our dog snatched him up right at the base of a tree, then promptly spat him back out and sat down with the most triumphant expression on his face ever. Proudest I’ve ever seen him!
The squirrel then climbed up the tree, shaken up a little, but unharmed by the dog.
I know a few labs and retrievers who, like our dog, have soft mouths when it comes to catching things, so our friends retriever will bring you a squirrel (unless it squeals, she drops squealing squirrels because they freak her out), but won’t hurt it and my old landlord’s dog had a habit of delivering slobber covered ducklings to your lap. You’d have to go and find the distraught mama duck to return her baby.
A neighbor however, has a Jack Russel terrier that will kill any squirrel it catches (and it has caught several) so that dog is never let off leash if there are small critters around.
my stupid dogs have literally run past rabbits who carefully freeze into place. :rolleyes: Not that I like seeing that carnage - since the min pin has caught bunnies (and moles, mice and birds) before, and he is a “kill” type of dog. No “soft mouth” on him!
OTOH, one of our other dogs, (half min pin) caught a bunny, snuffled its fur, let it hop away, “caught” it again, snuffled it again, and let it go again. He did this until the bunny said enough of the dog snot, I’m getting out of this yard!
No squirrels though - I don’t think my boys are either smart or fast enough.
Sure.
Success rate depends on the dog, and increases as the critter’s age decreases.
My goldens catch (and eat) baby bunnies all the time, and have (rarely) caught adult squirrels.
A Brittany I used to have would catch anything, squirrels, rabbits, possum. Before that dog, I had never heard a rabbit scream …
Yeah, our dog is all about the chase, not so much about the catching. Sometimes he’ll chase a squirrel, get it cornered, and then he just stands there waiting for it to bolt again. If the squirrel doesn’t run, he doesn’t chase. He just looks at me as if to say: “Make it go!”
ETA:
A Brittany! That’s the dog that used to bring us ducklings! He was a hunting dog, and would retrieve ducks you shot, but he never killed anything himself.
My aunt/uncle/cousins had a springer spaniel who would leap up in the air to catch birds. Sometimes he did.
My dog, a Husky, has successfully captured a number of squirrels and gophers, and even once got a pheasant. She was very proud of all of them, but we unfortunately made her leave them or we tossed them in the garbage. We do give her a different treat when we get home though.
How about flies? My rat terrier goes nuts chasing flies in the house. While I do allow him to chase the squirrels away from the bird feeder, I usually try to give them a running start by rattling the door a bit before opening. He has displayed a rather vigorous skake-to-death mechanism with his toys that I would rather not experience with a gore filled animal.
I found one of my beagles with a chipmunk in her mouth. I opened the back door to let her in and there it was, she was so happy. I don’t know where the chipmunk came from, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she caught it.
My dog would catch rats, and bring them home for us. I remember being terribly disgusted by her trotting up to me with the back end of a rat hanging out of her mouth - yuck!
My dog I had when I was little (collie/shepherd mix) was pretty good at catching moles. He’d dig them up but he didn’t seem to know what do do with them. He’d just put his paw on them and hold them down while they squeeked. Then someone would come over and he’d be like, “See what I did?”
Then I’d pull him away and the mole would run away. He never seemed to know how to kill it.
Then again, this is the same dog that got skunked, not once, not twice but THREE times in the same summer. You’d think he’d learn what a skunk is and what it’s capable of, not that dummy.
Oh yeah, although only the juvenile squirrels. Far more often they’d kill birds and leave them lying around the back yard. They’ve all been better mousers than any cat I own, although they wouldn’t eat the mouse fresh. They preferred crunching on any mouse corpse that had mummified in a remote corner and out of sight.
We had a rat terrier that would hunt anything smaller than herself. She was brutally efficient with squirrels, snapping their necks the moment she caught them. She never brought her prizes to us for praise, she just liked the killing part.
My border collie is a good mouser, and he’s caught adult ground squirrels too.
One of my Goldens stalks squirrels, just like a big, oversized cat. She rarely gets very close to the squirrels as one of the other dogs will figure out what she is up to and take off after the squirrel. Once, she managed to get within about 10 feet of a squirrel and took off after it. Just as she caught up to it, she somehow tripped over the squirrel and both of them went tumbling across the backyard. Unfortunately for my dog, the squirrel recovered first and shot up the nearest tree.
Just to make her feel good, we credit her with having actually “caught” a squirrel once!
My dog (a greyhound) is a killing machine. Anything in our yard that isn’t another dog is fair game. Squirrels have learned to stay out of the yard, and the opposums now cross our yard by walking along the fencetop rather than actually through the yard. His most spectacular feat of savagery was rushing 300 feet or so across our yard at a group of crows taking flight and jumping up to successfully snatch one out of mid-air at a height of 7 or 8 feet. I didn’t even comprehend what I had just seen (neither did the crow, I suspect) until he was already trotting back to me across the yard a mouth full of bird. I don’t know what impressed me more - the speed with which he crossed the yard, his graceful leap so high into the air or the fact that he dropped the crow on command and it lived.
Heh. I had a dog that finally caught a squirrel once.
He was so surprised, he dropped it, jumped a little, and gave me a “Holy Crap! Did you see that?!?” kind of look.
My greyhound has caught a good quantity of rats and other rodents which she will toss around like toys. She has also captured a number of jackrabbits(*), countless fawns and young deer, and even a couple of adult (200+ lb) deer. Luckily she does kill these catches–she only keeps them constrained until I catch up.
Creatures such as squirrels, cotton-tail rabbits, opossums, raccoons, grey foxes, and feral cats that use the brush for cover and/or climb trees, she has not been successful in catching. Other woodland critters like feral pigs and coyotes she just “plays” with and does not try to catch them at all.
- Just wanted to note that watching an actual jackrabbit chase is one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen. Seeing a lanky and seemingly awkward dog transform into a svelte, graceful, and powerful creature that just appears to float over the countryside at an unbelievable speed is a wonder to behold. Better than any documentary on Nature.
My German Shepherd used to catch birds - from the air - as they flew past. You think I’m joking, or lying, but you are wrong. She really did; not to mention the rabbits, squirrels and once a groundhog.
She also caught a Schnauzer, an Irish Setter, and three black labs (yes, all at once) but those were far less pleasant encounters.