#ratting

[wyrddogs]

Dunkin’ dachshunds.

[otterhead-adventures]

because not everyone might’ve seen my intro post i am going to put this picture under a cut. if you have seen it and you remember that my dog kills things as he was bred to do, well that’s this one! our grill was knocked down a few days ago in a storm and the resulting grease spill attracted some rats. kaiser got the first this morning, a good dog!

tw dead rat if i wasn’t clear enough

[pawsitivevibe]

Lil ratting boy.

This is a practice session for Barn Hunt novice level. So the dog must find 1 rat, go through the tunnel, and execute 1 climb where all 4 feet are on the bales. So you can see Arthur goes through the tunnel immediately, but at one point I make sure to get him to climb.

Arthur is a very thorough sniffer. It may look like sometimes he's just walking past areas, but he is air scenting, and doing what we often refer to as a "drive by." Sometimes he does a "drive by" of an area and then goes back for a better look. You can't really see his alert in the video, but he nose locks on the rat tube. His ratting alert is actually supposed to be pawing at it, which I didn't get on this run but did in a later run.

He's wearing a belly band but he probably doesn't really need it. He lifted a leg on a bale one time in his first session of ratting classes. He was young, and I get that hay bales are confusing because they probably smell like outside. But he's an intact male ... So why not just play it safe and not make the whole class stop while pee is cleaned up? Belly bands are not allowed in BHA trials, so when we go to the upcoming one he will be fully naked. They do allow them in Rats! Canada, which is probably what most of our trials in the future will be under because very few places run BHA trials around here.

[faint-kitten]

twitch

[thegadlingguides]

There's a reason there are so many small dogs on medieval manuscripts as well as the fancy hunting dog kind. The little dishrags were USEFUL. Got a field beset with rabbits or crows eating your barleycorn? Leave it to Mister Waggins, he'll run around and bark at them all day. Rats in the hay in the cow barn? Spotsbitche has got you covered. Hedgecreeper trying your doorhandle in the dead of night looking for things to steal? Floppy Tom will let you know.

All hail the humble yap-rat. ...You just have to remember what they were bred to DO.

[creekfiend]

Its possible that the grain crib is actually a bachelor pad for gay rats now that I think of it. The only ones Ive ever seen there have been males

[puppyrazzi]

Luckily Sam is a good hunter because my other option was burning the house to the ground.

I was sitting in bed and heard a thump on the other side of the room and Sam went racing over to the noise. Turns out a mouse had fallen out of the ceiling via a displaced ceiling tile. :( So Sam hunted it and didn't eat this one. I stopped the video so I could run over and get it. Also ignore my voice. I couldn't get the sound off.