Retriever Rescue

The sun is out yipee, and so are the rabbits, Jasper has managed to catch 4 now. Not on the same day. He won,t come near just trots behind with his trophy in his mouth, have tried rugby tackling to catch him but he is very fit and swift. Usually after lots of bribery with a trail of dog biscuits he drops, the last one wasn,t so lucky he decided to eat it, then was sick thankfully.

Do anyone else's dogs catch them ? I know lots of retrievers try, and I thought he was a gun dog, and he is meant to bring it back and drop.

Molly's far too slow to catch anything as quick as a rabbit.

But how lucky are you to get such nice presents!?! All I get is dirty undies.

And how many times have we all said, "I thought he was a gun dog, and he is meant to................." Rule one with Retrievers ought to be, "They never do quite what they're supposed to."

Good luck trying to become the founder of the bunny protection league!

One of my cats is at it as well, came down this morning and found a dead bird plonked next to the fruit bowl. what goes through animals minds to think that we would like a dead animal as a pressie is beyond me.

This whole story reminded me of my chow chow Mia. I had a hamster that lived in a cage in the utility room. One day it chewed through the plastic bottom of the cage and escaped. I thought the poor thing was gone forever and could never survive. Then Mia decided to take herself for a walk round the garden. Do you know, she found Hammy, picked her up and delivered her unharmed (except for a severe case of shock at her near death experience in the mouth of a drooling dog, I suspect) to the back door and waited for me to come and relieve her of her package.

She used to do it with mice too. She'd 'liberate' them from the field behind our house, bring them to the back door, trap their tails under one front paw and bat them around for a while with the other paw. Eventually, the poor rodent would be released and limp back to its nest - dizzy I dare say, but not permanently harmed.

I wonder what Molly would do in a similar situation. Currently, she's a tiny bit too slow (and frankly too lazy most of the time) to actually catch anything so I'm living carrion free. HURRAH!

Cobi goes like the wind after rabbits, Ceili, Jasmine and Abby were fast but not as fast as Cobi.
Cobi has caught squirrels, and I wonder if she has been nipped by one as she knows exactly where to hold them.
She stalks rabbits for several minutes, I've taken photographs over 3 or 4 minutes of her stealthily moving slowly forwards catlike, before running at it. She doesn't kill rabbits but will bring dead ones back to me and struts back very proudly displaying it, then she will 'leave it' when told to....but has to have a sneaky dive and roll on it first before being back at my side... little madam.


' For a change a nice and clean Cobi '

Beautiful Cobi. One of the cleanest pictures I have seen of her.

Had to smile, didn't want to , at the thought of Mia holding the mouse by the tail and giving it a bat. I bet it was dizzy.

I thought you said your girls didn't..do..poses Lynda, or did you catch her unawares. That's a beauty!!

Hello Jean.....I was just lucky.... you have to be very quick and just snap away and hope you get a good shot of Cobi because she is that quick..... I must take several hundred photographs for a decent one of her, as all of a sudden she just throws herself at the ground and rolls over and over.

I love the photo.
Last year jasper caught a hedgehog, my fault he was barking at 3.00 in the morning, so i went downstairs thinking he needed the loo, but oh no, when i opened the back door he shot out and dived at the poor hedgehog and I spent about 1/2hr trying to get it off him, without waking the neighbours .I had to wake hubby and between the 2 of us we managed to get him to drop, but poor thing had died by then. Now when he barks in middle of night I ignore him.
Funny thing is when he chases my cats in the garden they just stop and look at him and then he doesn,t know what to do, mind you one of them did hiss at him and he came running back quick.

And when the cats catch mice and leave them in the garden he will roll on them, lovely dead mice on his back. Luckily for me he doesn't roll on fox poo like lots of dogs do, to busy chasing rabbits.