Our pup just turned 1 - his name is Grady. He’s 50% Border Collie, 50% Siberian Husky, very playful, very smart and he is definitely a looker!
However, he’s also a hunter. Aside from digging holes in our 3 acres of alpine meadow looking for voles, he’s taken to grabbing cicada’s out of the trees, letting them buzz in his paw for a second then devouring them. And lately, we’ve seen him tracking and snagging ground squirrels and the other night I was watching TV when I heard that blood curdling sound of something dying…I looked around the room and counted heads to make sure all my dogs were here; they were not. So I put my headlamp on and ran outside and down the hill and to my surprise Grady had cornered a large raccoon. He’d obviously tousled with it because there were clumps of coon hair all over and the coon was wide eyed and trembling. So I immediately grabbed him and in that split second the coon ran up a tree. Anyway, I have a problem because he is not playing with the animals, he’s consuming them.
We recently took him to the vet [because he has been eating a lot of grass] and it has gotten worms from eating so many voles. The vet said that she was concerned, but not overly concerned because it is his nature to find and eat animals. I was asking all kinds of questions about bones, diseases, rabies, etc…and she said if he was up-to-date on all of his shots, rabies was not too much of an issue, bit that he needs to be better trained to not eat the other animals, and that, she said, was not easy to do.
Does anyone have any suggestions on this issue? I am not that concerned about him eating mice, it’s the larger things I care about - in the mean time I am keeping him on the porch at night and am going to try and dissuade him from eating everything that moves.
I can’t imagine cicadas and rodents are a problem unless you (or a neighbor) are putting out insecticides/rat poison/etc. Him fighting with possums and coons could be, though, since a pissed-off male of either of those species can inflict some serious damage before being turned into possum sashimi. I don’t have any specific ideas about that, but you might Google “rattlesnake aversion training” for the techniques used in that department.
Come to think of it: any snakes in your area? Especially with all the voles? He might benefit from this anyway!
He looks a lot like Blackjack, who we suspect is a mix of Border Collie and German Shepherd. Blackjack engages in the same activities, digging, hunting, and eating what he catches. His doctor has recommended worming 3 times a year instead of twice.
Yep, we were just warned to worm three times a year.
He is neutered and unfortunately, it is impossible to keep him inside. A) he’ll destroy it. B) he’s not a fan of inside really. On the coldest, most snowy nights he can always be found in his favorite chair on the back porch, covered in snow and loving every minute of it.
My main concerns are mountain lions and large coyotes, both of which have not been in the yard yet this year. We had a bear wander through and that was fun, but he just watched from afar, no growling or anything…just watched - until his brother came outside and went apeshit, then the bear ran off.
I think Grady is living the life, lucky thing. Parasites, and injuries from tussling with larger animals, are the main concerns. Just get him more frequent check-ups to stay on top of the worms, and hope he’s smart enough not to tangle with anything that could seriously injure him. But it’s a good sign that he’s shown forbearance in the face of a large dangerous animal like a bear, and he’s probably bigger, tougher and more assertive than any coyote.
If you keep him inside or fenced in you’ll both be miserable.
He might calm down a little when he’s older, but IME once a hunter, always a hunter. Dogs who have the opportunity to build good hunting skills, and understand that killing means eating delicious raw prey, are usually enthusiastic well into old age! Plus raw wild prey is much more nutritious than any dog food, keeps them muscular and sharp. My older dog will be 15 and her vision is poor now, but she has as strong a ‘ratting’ instinct as she ever did and plenty of energy. She doesn’t get much opportunity to hunt though, since I live in an apartment.
ETA: Grady truly is gorgeous - how much does he weigh? Looks like a solid dog who might have a little guard-breed in him…
Mixed breeds can pretty much deal with anything (medicine, food, etc.)
I have a 14 year old healer mix hunter. I’ve seen her bring down a doe, drag home a 6 point road kill buck (yes, I kept the rack and it was pretty funny when she tried to pull it through the dog door), all other types of road kill, I learned that rabbits scream when they die, etc. She never out grew it, but she did learn to avoid confrontations with coons and possums.
She’s blind and partially deaf now, but she still wants to hunt. Now she satisfies herself eating dead fish on the beach (the rule is she can eat it but not roll in it). The vet marvels at how physically fit she is at her age.
Like others, I worry about Grady getting into a scrape with one of the more hostile animals; but isn’t the joy of watching a dog grow partly due to watching their love of life?
This is probably the biggest issue, assuming there aren’t any sheep or goat ranches nearby ( if there are then getting shot for coursing domestic animals might be a worrisome possibility ). A co-worker just had a raccoon do $1100.00 worth of damage to his own strong-prey-drive medium-sized dog - not just puncture wounds, but torn muscles and the like. Raccoons are tough critters for their size and nothing for even a large dog to casually fuck around with.
If he can’t be kept inside except for when supervised, you might consider a roomy fenced run or yard area. Otherwise it’s just going to be a crap shoot. Which might be fine, just prepare yourself for a potential mess.
I can’t offer much advice, but I think you just lit a lightbulb over my head: my dog did not like the indoors, not one bit. It was a fight to get her to spend winters indoors from the age of 12 on, and she was miserable inside but we couldn’t leave an elderly dog like that outside in the cold so we all suffered with it for the last three winters of her life.
She was a husky cross too, and until now I never thought to wonder if that’s why she prefered the outdoors.
Make sure he has flea protection 12 months out of the year. Vets in snowy areas don’t push flea protection in the winter, but my dog has gotten fleas both times she caught rabbits in February. The fleas live on the warm burrowing rabbits.
Underlining mine:
It’s funny, our vet is a mountain vet - only here in her office on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - as needed on weekends and she mentioned something like this. She said, all our big dogs up here get quarterly flea and tick dips because they eat so much raw food year round - But that raw food [minus the worms] keeps them healthy and happy well into elderhood.
Also, I don’t know about guard dog, unless siberian husky is guard dog. His dad is 100% Siberian Husky, Mom is 100% Border Collie.
Yes, this! I love watching how fast and smart he is - very cunning when hunting too. And such a good listener. Last night he was howling at something waaay down at the bottom of our property line, probably 400 yards away, so not close-by. I went out, whistled once, and that was that, he came running up and I gave him a treat for listening…even though it was 3:30 in the a.m.
We asked our vet and she said, just let him sleep wherever he wants…our porch closes off, so he can be outside, and not in harms way and able to get inside via the dog door at any time.
One hazard not yet mentioned: Grady might decide to find out what skunks taste like. But I guess if he’s not coming into the house that it’s less of an issue.
True. Also, neutering is not a guarantee of reduced aggression towards other males, especially if the dog is older/fully adult when neutered.
Skunks, tapeworms, being bitten…but if you’re attentive and Grady is vaccinated and so on, he’s probably not at too much risk from wildlife.
I had a dog get into an altercation with a skunk in my fenced yard…she was not only sprayed, but bitten on the snout. Had to take her to the vet for antibiotics for the puncture wounds. My current little terrier mix catches and eats mice, she’s had tapeworms twice.
