OK, so Border Collies aren't hounds, but they have an eye for rabbits - they've supplied the household dinner before now - and they keep the garden rat-free. Both suit me.


Snorri

That he certainly does. My mother tried to train him out of it but it is their instinct. She found he tended to run off and sneakily kill his prey, then the other dog would eat it .... not a good result! So now she just lets him bring them to her, says thank you and throws them away.
It's almost like telling us not to eat our food or not to breath. It is what they originally were bred to do.
What you could do is put a bell on the collar, i know someone who does that to warn the rabbits there is a dog nearby.

ClaireandDaisy

Mmmm maybe it wasn't meant that way ? - whilst i wouldn't willingly let my dog kill a rabbit, if she happened to catch one while we were out there wouldn't be much i could do about it and i don't really want to muzzle her - they usually get the better of her anyway, and it is a natural instinct in most dogs i would think.

I have whippets and none of them have a particuly high prey drive. It does tend to depend on how they are bred working or racing breds have a higher prey drive than a show bred. One of mine is half show bred and half working bred but as he is only 12 weeks old he doesn't chase things yet.

My ex racing greyhound would chase and kill a rabbit but my show bred greyhound has no inclanation to chase anything. Some one once asked what he would do if he ever go lost. My answer was he would find the nearest shop or an already dead rabbit and take it to the nearest house to be cooked for him. He is totaly uselesshe doesn't eat raw meat not even bones.

I have a young gsd, (2 1/2) last summer, I caught him with a baby bunny which I took from him, he maybe had it for 15 mins or more. I took it away and let it go and off it hopped quite unhurt - later in the month I had noticed he was putting on weight and then spied on him one morning. He must have been catching and eating maybe three bunnies every morning before breakfast, in some dogs, the drive is so pronounced to expel it is near impossible - greyhounds I would think could be very difficult indeed. It is a very natural drive for a dog and in some... is almost impossible to completely extinguish. JMO

Flynn is fine when out on a walk until he flushes a rabbit or pheasant and then he goes into a different mode whereby his sole purpose is to catch something. He doesnt rip things apart though and he doesnt eat what he catches, he simply brings it to me. He hunts to kill and gets very serious about it.

For the 2 collies, it's all about the chase and if they caught something, they wouldnt know what to do with it, Jed has proven this several times.

I admit I do actively encourage my dogs to hunt for rabbits but they have their heads buried too far down a hole to see the rabbit bolt from another hole. If they caught one it would get used one way or another.

Rabbits, pheasants etc are all prey animals and dogs are predators, surely it's natural?

Yup - that`s me. Unless you`re right at the lower end of the food chain you`re involved in killing - as prey or predator. Or do you think cats don`t kill birds, birds don`t kill, otters don`t kill, wolves don`t kill, foxes don`t kill? There`s a lot of things you can call Mother Nature but `innocent` isn`t one of them. Trying to stop a predator (a dog) from killing is one thing, but denying that it is natural for a dog to kill is plain...funny. (IMHO) If you stop your pet predator from killing, it`s for our own convenience, not for the sake of the animals. The meat in the dogfood didn`t give itself up willingly to the abbatoir. All that`s happened is that you don`t see the animals your dog eats die. I`m pretty sure a quick kill and a wild life is vastly preferable to a torture of a battery cage and the terror of electrocution, dangling on a production line.

if you live in the country you will know what a pest a rabbit can be farmers have dogs that kill rabbits,dogs that kill rats and guns that kill foxes ,it has to be done .

Lol, just read my post above and Jed has proved me wrong! The 4 dogs were rabbiting the other day and Jed was out of sight. I called for him and he materialised with a baby bunny in his mouth. I made him drop it in the hope it was still unharmed but alas it was headless so I let him finish it off. Jessie has also munched away at some leverets she found so it goes to show that even the gentlest of dogs at home can become the wolf when prey is about.

I dont want my dogs to become obsessed about hunting and there are some wild animals I wouldnt want them to kill such as deer but as far as rabbits, pheasants, partridge, wood pigeon etc go, if they catch something and dont consume it on the spot then it gets taken home, prepared and they have a bit of raw for dinner.

My Mum thinks it's shocking my dogs hunt. She naively said that she didnt think domesticated dogs behaved in such a way and that her previous family dogs never chased things or ate the family rabbit. She said it's cruel and I shouldnt feed them what they catch as they could get ill from it!