|
Post by megan on Jul 15, 2014 20:51:30 GMT -5
Roxy's prey drive is insane. I posted about her incident with the deer on Memorial Day (here, for reference: therealpitbull.proboards.com/thread/13275/spending-memorial-day-vet). Today we spent another almost $500 at the vet because she was chasing a chipmunk around the hot tub and wound up slicing the crap out of her paw late yesterday. She cut herself between her paws and wound up with a handful more stitches today and a nice bandaged food and antibiotics to boot. She was still chasing the stupid thing even after she sliced her paw open, similar to still chasing the deer after she was cut open. This is happening inside of our fenced yard, it's not like she's running loose or something. And our yard isn't that large. Two incidents requiring sutures within 1.5 months. This is getting old. She has a solid "leave it" but she can't hear a damn thing I say when she's chasing little fuzzies. I know you can't "train prey drive out" as some people like to believe.... but what can I do here? I'm running out of money!!
|
|
|
Post by suziriot on Jul 15, 2014 21:56:30 GMT -5
I know it's not ideal, but seems like the only option is to take her out on a leash. I have to do that with Brandy a lot. Her prey drive is ridiculous. She actually tried to climb a tree once to get to a squirrel. Luckily the furry critters seem to be smart enough to stay out of my yard for the most part.
|
|
|
Post by Dave on Jul 16, 2014 15:36:11 GMT -5
I would say use the leash. It's the only way to assure that she will not chase.
On the other end of the spectrum, Sedona flushed a bunny the other day. She stopped and watched it run a circle in the yard and under the fence. Then she wanted to go back inside. No prey drive whatsoever.
|
|
|
Post by RealPitBull on Jul 17, 2014 7:19:35 GMT -5
It's tough to manage prey drive, for sure. The thing that helped curbed Luca's prey drive which was pretty intense was a lot of leash work using chasing prey as a reward (on leash and obviously not allowed to catch anything). I'd let him chase squirrels to trees as a reward for ignoring them. It actually took his drive down quite a few notches. Maybe something like this would help curb Roxy's drive? She'd have to be leashed/prevented from chasing anything in the meantime, though, because it would be counter productive to the training process.
DAVE: that's really interesting about Sedona.
|
|
|
Post by Dave on Jul 17, 2014 18:35:11 GMT -5
Mary, the only thing she goes after other than Lola are bees and wasps. She's nuts for them!
|
|
|
Post by RealPitBull on Jul 18, 2014 7:44:44 GMT -5
Mary, the only thing she goes after other than Lola are bees and wasps. She's nuts for them! Wow crazy little dog
|
|
|
Post by megan on Jul 30, 2014 20:21:30 GMT -5
Thanks everyone for the ideas.
My concern with keeping her on leash in the yard all the time is that she would literally get no exercise that way. We can't walk her in my neighborhood, unfortunately. I hate to be that person that doesn't walk my dog, but it's simply not an option here... There are so many off leash dogs and she is dog reactive, fearful of other dogs, and also is fearful of people in general. Walks are super stressful, and she comes back more worked up than anything else because no matter what time of day it is, some idiot has their dog off leash. I know it's not ideal not to walk her, but she gets a significant portion of her exercise playing in the yard with Buster or with me. We hike when we can, but things have been sticky here and I'm working 70-80 hours a week, so we aren't hiking often unfortunately.
And Mary, I will try that chasing prey as a reward thing with her for sure. We do that on hikes and in the past on walks, just never thought about using it in the yard.
As of right now, we check the yard for deer every time we let them out. I know we were extremely lucky that she wasn't more seriously injured chasing that thing, so we should be able to stop that from happening since we can view the entire yard from the window in the back of the house. I've also blocked off the areas she does the most chasing and that seems to be helping a bit, although I know that isn't a permanent solution. Two of the biggest areas were going under the deck (3 feet off the ground) and then circling the hot tub, where a chipmunk or family of chipmunks has been living underneath. She'd been running circles around the hot tub while the silly thing squeaked and now that I've blocked the back side off, she can't run fully around it, which seems to make it less interesting for some reason.
|
|
|
Post by fureverywhere on Jul 30, 2014 20:29:30 GMT -5
I can sympathize. I can only walk Sophie on leash now, but she's so damned determined to pick off stray cats I'm considering a muzzle. She's killed two in the past and any squirrel she's quick enough to get. Even on leash she spots something and it's like WHEEPWHEEPWHHEP.
|
|
|
Prey drive
Jul 31, 2014 11:51:07 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by maryellen on Jul 31, 2014 11:51:07 GMT -5
Can you put up a blockage on the fence so she cant see the deer? And block off the areas she used to chase for chipmunks?
|
|
|
Post by megan on Aug 1, 2014 12:35:24 GMT -5
That's what we've done for the chipmunks, blocked off the areas she uses for hunting and chasing and that's helped tremendously. I've also gotten incredibly strict with her, as soon as she starts towards her "hunting" area, I tell her to leave it (before she's in the "zone"), and if she keeps going to the area for the chipmunks, I say "too bad" and she goes inside. It seems to be helping stop the chase before it even starts. At the very least, it's helping prevent the pattern of her going searching for chipmunks. The little things don't seem to squeak (which is the trigger to go bananas) unless the dogs are trying to flush it out, so we're working that angle for now. And with the area being blocked off, if she does attempt to start chasing, she's easily caught and removed whereas before she could just run around and around and around the hot tub. Since we've blocked off her route, she can't do that anymore.
And the deer outside the fence aren't a huge issue, she barks at them but that I don't mind. In fact, I prefer it because I want the deer to be afraid to come into the yard because the dogs are there. The issue with the deer is when they jump over the fence and graze and sleep in our yard, so we've dealt with that by surveying the yard before going outside and scaring the deer off (if they are in the yard) before letting the dogs out. It's just scary to think that all it takes is the ONE time I forget to check the yard, there could be a deer there. So far we've just made it a pattern to check the yard by putting the dog poop bags by the window so I have to go to the window before going outside anyway.
|
|
|
Post by maryellen on Aug 1, 2014 16:39:01 GMT -5
dam your deer are ballsy omg... i think i would faint if i woke up to a deer IN my fenced in yard, my fence is only 4 feet tall .... the dogs would go totally nuts. can you add fencing to the top of your fence to make it less inviting?
|
|
|
Post by megan on Aug 1, 2014 21:53:26 GMT -5
The part of the fence they jump over is at least 4 feet tall chain link, possible 4.5 feet. I caught another one in the yard today, just standing there eating some of the ivy that grows there. When I opened the door to scare her off, she just looked at me, and went back to eating, the little crapper!! And she came back a few hours later, I caught her standing around on the other side of the fence with her head hanging over the fence into the yard. I honestly can't believe they keep coming into the yard with the stench of dogs back there, especially after being chased by dogs and me throwing things at them to scare them off. You'd think they'd learn to keep away, but apparently they aren't smart creatures.... And ME, that's what we are talking about now, adding a "trip line" so to speak to keep them from being able to jump the fence. I'm just worried one will try to jump and get tangled and I'll go out there to find a deer caught and dangling
|
|
|
Post by maryellen on Aug 2, 2014 19:06:07 GMT -5
Those dam Bergen county deer are not as afraid as the deer up here. When i lived in Paramus the deer there were afraid of nothing..
|
|
|
Post by maryellen on Aug 3, 2014 12:48:18 GMT -5
If you put the barrier fence facing outward so they cant jump in that should work
|
|
|
Post by megan on Aug 14, 2014 19:53:25 GMT -5
ME, what do you mean a barrier fence facing outward?
|
|
|
Post by maryellen on Aug 15, 2014 5:38:08 GMT -5
Yep like the barbed wire facing outward and up like the fencing at pics tiny arsenal its chain link fence with three lines of barbed wire on top of chain link facing out- you cant climb over it and deer cant jump inside due to the barbed wire facing them
|
|
|
Post by megan on Aug 26, 2014 13:33:03 GMT -5
Ohhhh I gotcha. We'll have to look into that!
|
|