How Prey driven is your dog???

Fergie - only likes dead rodents - those you can roll in...[:'(]
Maska - "You mean I have to get off the couch?  Nah, I'll take the roast beef."
Sioux - Definitely the squirrel, but she can be called off the chase for a liver treat.
Sequoyah - Squirrel here, frisbee there - I'll take the disc, mom! 

Indy is VERY prey-driven. he's not safe around the ferrets, for instance, or the mice, but he ignores rats. (I had pet rats when he was a puppy.)

Mal will kill mice and rats (he almost caught a bunny at the park) but is perfectly safe with the ferrets and my friend's guinea pigs.

Definitely the treat. My dog's food drive is very, very high. She wouldn't even notice the squirrel.

With Cassidy I don't think it would be so much the prey drive as the protection drive....we have some squirells in our woods and she is *always*  on the lookout for them. So, she would run as soon as she saw the squirell, but she wouldn't go very far before she came back if I was calling her. She's reliable enough to come back, but she'd probably run at the squirell first. She'd settle for treeing the squirell and come back. I doubt she'd catch it if I was there, because she knows better.

Mirelle just has a puppy play drive, and if she knew I had a really good treat, she'd come for it because she is very food motivated. She might chase the squirell a little, because it looks like so much fun, but not to eat it.

Maggie and Zoe have no prey drive at all.  They would take the treat and then beg for more. 
Gracie kills squirells on a regular basis she is a quick little girl so she would definatly go after the squirrel and come back for the treat.
Lucy is a puppy so she is a hyper little girl.  She loves to chase squirrels but doesn't try to hurt them.  She would probably chase the squirrel first and come back for the treat as well.

Kaiser is very prey driven...anything that runs, he wants (including humans). Wyatt, it's a toss up. He can see very well so he'll go after lazers, shadows, bugs, squirrels, anything...BUT, he is hardcore about food!

My name's Joyce too -- but I go by Sairey on the forum. Not many of us Joyces out there.......... ANYWAY, what causes high prey drive anyway? One of mine has it & seems incurable.

What causes high prey drive .... Genes. Dogs that were bred  to hunt, to fight or to guard typically have high prey drives.  I have rhodesian ridgebacks - they're sighthounds and sighthounds are worse than most.

Not a whole lot you can do about it. Ultimately our dogs are predators and still have alot of their predator skills.

Paula

Dooley would have a melt down trying to decide between the two..but I think in the end the squirrel would win...er lose?
Witt and Annie would both go for the critter and not even hear me, let alone realize I had a treat offering.

ANYWAY, what causes high prey drive anyway? One of mine has it & seems incurable.

Is something wrong with prey drive? I find it VERY useful, in training. It can be very controllable, but you could never make it go away.

I would never have Marlowe any other way. His prey drive is part of who he is and it is part of his heritage as a working dog. It's manageable with training so that it doesn't overwhelm him at times when he can't fulfill his drives, but for that training to be successful, he has to have other outlets for his hunting drive. Our relationship is very much based upon him seeing me as a partner in hunting, though we don't actually literally hunt together. When I do give him time to "hunt" (though he rarely actually catches anything) I always praise him for a job well done, follow his lead in the hunt and get excited about his successes. He was a little nonplussed when he first came to live with me that whenever he treed something I didn't actually shoot it out of the tree, but he decided that a treat and a nice bum scratch and a job well done was a pretty good reward instead.

Hopefully his prey drive will make him an excellent tracking dog. We're starting soon and I've got visions of TDXs dancing through my head. [] Most working dogs do their work through some exagerated facet of prey drive. All dogs go through certain set stages while hunting and what selective breeding of dogs has done is to create certain breeds that focus primarily on one stage and not so much the others. Herding dogs are focused primarily on the "eye stalk" stage of hunting, while scenthounds like Marlowe are focused on the "track and trail" stage. Without prey drive, we'd be without most of the working breeds.

Colton would go for the squirrel.  There's no doubt!  It took him a very long time to teach him to live in peace with my rabbits and sugar gliders.  Every day it was a struggle to teach him to leave them alone.  Now, he just ignores them. 
Rose would take the treat.  Very rarely does her prey drive kick in.  She hangs around my rabbits and has even had a baby glider on her back.  She did chase a cat once, but I really doubt she would have hurt the cat.  I showed her the cats at work the other day, and she wanted to get away from them.  I saw her look very interested ina  squirrel ONE time.  She is definitely not a normal Russell!

He was a little nonplussed when he first came to live with me that whenever he treed something I didn't actually shoot it out of the tree, but he decided that a treat and a nice bum scratch and a job well done was a pretty good reward instead.

LOL! He probably just think's you're "special"; you know, in that "bless her heart" dog way. I can just hear the Southern Drawl (cuz he's a coonhound), "Das all right honey, you jes go ahead and scratch my butt, that's as good enough as shootin' that coon outa the tree. Bless your heart."

Paula

Oh lordy I know both my dogs think I'm "speshul". I'm sure late at night when they're both pretending to sleep downstairs on the futon, actually they're staying up late and giggling together at all our weird human foibles and habits.

I don't know what you mean! There is no whispering between dogs in my house[]

Sigh; I do love hounds.

Paula