Hunter Dog

I expect cats to be hunters and particularly so when we live out here in the country with lots of varmints they can track and stalk and catch and dispatch.  I have finally come to the realization that my dog, Sadie, is a hunter also.  We were out in the back yard late one night a month or so ago when she brought me a very dead unnamed animal.  It was firmly in her mouth and it took a lot of negotiating to get her to let go of it.  It had a long tail so it wasn't a gopher or mole.  The tail was too long and the animal was too large to be a mouse.  I would guess it was a very large rat although thankfully my experience with rats is limited so it could have been something else.

<Yuck! says Penny and she shudders!>

A couple of weeks ago Sadie was out for a quick run before we loaded up to go to her obedience class.  When I went to grab her collar and encourage her into the car I realized she had yet another dead animal in her mouth.  This time I let my husband do the negotiating to get it out of her mouth.  He assures me is was indeed a rat.  Where does she find these animals?  It's not like we have surveillance cameras on the garden to help the cats find dinner.

Then yesterday morning Sadie and I were again out feeding the animals.  She wandered away from me when I went to put the feed buckets back in the barn and I was a little bit concerned about her but she was waiting patiently on the porch for me.  The air conditioned air in the house is a great draw in this horrible heat.  I was about to open the door when I realized she had a tail and one leg dangling out of her mouth.  This time she had an animal that was small enough to fit completely into her mouth so not a large rat.  By the looks of the tail it was a field mouse.  Nope.  Not going into the house with a mouse in her mouth.  I put her in the back yard and when she asked to come in about 15 minutes later, there was nothing of a foreign nature in her mouth.

My husband had a cat when he was young that would take whatever he had recently caught - a rabbit or mouse or rat - and push it under the stoop so when you looked out the window all you could see was the cat.  As soon as you opened the door, the cat would grab it's prey and rush into the house with it so she could put it in her food bowl.  I'm starting to get that same feeling with Sadie.