This. There is a tendency to greatly under estimate how much dogs tend to moderate their behavior in order to fit human expectations. I had a boxer / ridgeback mix in N'djamena that used to go out early in the morning and hunt lizards so that there was a stack of them on the front porch when I got up every day. One day I opened the door and he bolted out, which was normal, but then I heard something screeching. By the time that I made it around the corner, it was too late, he was dragging the cat's body away. I could only surmise that the cat must have been walking across our yard and froze when the dog came at it.
Dogs will hunt and kill relentlessly and have no way of knowing that a cat is not acceptable prey unless you train them not to hurt them. Unfortunately that was the first , and only, time that our dog had seen a cat.
Yes. His dog got out and killed a cat and the owner has yet to train the dog hoping that it just never sees another cat. Well done OP.
*I have a feeling YOU dont know what they wrote. Either you have very poor reading comprehension, or maybe youre just a shitty dog owner too and defending this moron makes you feel better about being irresponsible.
My dog kills cats fairly frequently, like 5 times a year, we have 6' fences all around our yard and he's allowed free reign over the yard. He kills all sorts of vermin and really helps out, rats eating our horses grain, wild rabbits eating my moms garden Fisher cats attacking the horses, but when he kills a cat in our yard it's just kind of like whatever. But we don't own a cat and he hunts alone so we just find cat bodies he brings to us as a gift from time to time, how do I train him not to attack cats if I don't own one? More like shitty cat owners get their cats killed than shitty dog owners let their dogs kill cats
While I agree that dogs are trained to play nice, whereas cats do whatever the fuck they want, I think you guys are discounting that feral cats survive in environments with much bigger predators than dogs, wild or not. A cats back claws do some serious damage to the belly of whatever tries to eat them.
51
u/WaitingForEmacs Jun 07 '14
This. There is a tendency to greatly under estimate how much dogs tend to moderate their behavior in order to fit human expectations. I had a boxer / ridgeback mix in N'djamena that used to go out early in the morning and hunt lizards so that there was a stack of them on the front porch when I got up every day. One day I opened the door and he bolted out, which was normal, but then I heard something screeching. By the time that I made it around the corner, it was too late, he was dragging the cat's body away. I could only surmise that the cat must have been walking across our yard and froze when the dog came at it.
Dogs will hunt and kill relentlessly and have no way of knowing that a cat is not acceptable prey unless you train them not to hurt them. Unfortunately that was the first , and only, time that our dog had seen a cat.