Yeah, I occasionally find bits of small woodland critters in my grass now and again - You’d think my dogs would be too large to successfully chase squirrels, but they manage. Probably because they accelerate like shot from guns, and that initial lunge carries them a LONG way.
I’ve seen one of them scare a squirrel on the fence so badly, the squirrel forgot how to coordinate its legs, and couldn’t figure out which direction to flee. Fortunately for the squirrel, it managed to scramble and bobble its way out of reach and up a telephone pole. Last I saw of it, it was two poles away and fleeing fast.
My Chihuahua loves to chase squirrels once he caught one but made no attempt to actually kill it. The squirrel bit him on the leg pretty bad bite. Now he just chases and keeps a little distance.
We had a collie/shepherd mix that grabbed a baby bunny once. My wife yelled “Drop it!” and she did. Blackjack was a known killer of critters though. When we found the first squirrel carcass, really just the skin left, his doctor told us to worm him three times a year instead of the usual two.
Just this morning I saw one of the neighbor’s cats happily jaunting away with one of our chipmunks still squirming in it’s mouth. I’m pretty sure it was Dale.
I took Mrs. Plant (v.2.0) to a dog herding workshop in Mississippi. A tiny dog was selected to herd some strange looking small ducks. The ducks attacked him, and he hid behind his owner’s foot.
Our Heeler/Beagle mix Ginger has caught both a squirrel and a mouse. If our yard was bigger with fewer trees she’s probably catch more. I said “drop it” when she caught the squirrel, and it ran up a tree minus half of its tail. I have no love for squirrels, but didn’t want her to eat an urban tree rat.
Not unbelievable. When I was young, we had a German Shorthair whom was pure death to things on wings. He’d even lure them into a sense of security - I watched him establish a “I can’t go there” buffer zone with a bunch of magpies. Once teh magpies became habituated to the safe zone, he went after them and nailed a bunch before they learned the real danger zone. He then went back to the old ‘restricted’ range and started again.
Yes, but it was completely accidental. It had just rained and my BF let his catahoula out in the yard. There was a squirrel in the palm tree and as it tried to jump from the frond of one to a frond of the other, it slipped off the wet frond and dropped… right into the waiting mouth of the dog. The dog was as surprised as we were and in shock, he dropped it. We laughed for days about that, but that dog did manage to catch one another time… I was in bed and didn’t see it, but I had to keep my Bostons inside until exBF wrested the dead critter out of his dog’s mouth (at which point I handed exBF a shovel and pointed out a good spot to bury it).
Slightly related (because I call squirrels “tree rats”), my 14-year-old Boston once wandered out into the darkness to pee in the backyard. She popped back up on the porch with a dead rat in her mouth. I have no idea how a deaf, mostly blind, 14-year-old, decrepit dog managed to catch a rat, but… I had to pry it out of her mouth and get rid of it (I buried it maybe? Don’t remember). It was either dead already when she found it or it was a kamakaze rat and jumped in her mouth to its death.
I have a rat problem at my house right now and my pibble is the WORST critter hunter I have ever seen. She’s big and slow and doesn’t seem to be terribly interested. I had to hire a critter-catching company because she is WORTHLESS against vermin. Completely useless. However, if you need to make mulch out of an old stick, I’ve got the perfect dog for you!
Over the years with lots of farm dogs, I had a pair one time that learned to team up on squirrels, and could catch them whenever they wanted. Squirrels stayed away from the house area though, so they had to go off a quarter mile to nearby woods.
They would pick a common squirrel tree, one dog would lie down near the base of the tree and wait, sometimes a half hour or more. Then the other dog would come in and circle around, and chase random squirrels towards that tree, where the hidden dog would stay frozen until a squirrel nearly ran over him. They would switch trees and which dog had beater and biter positions, so it was a well planned and rehearsed tactic.
Where are you? I can send, for free, our two rodent-killer pibbles - they’re in a lot of trouble: they bit my Japanese maple sapling in two, Baxter and Jack had a fight (Old Jack starts them, Bax is tired of him doing it and fought back), and Tally snuck the Bose remote into the backyard and chewed a few buttons off.