The Hard Way

[dbm 49]

Sorry to hear about your bitch mate,your new pups are lil crackers, atb for the future

[marshman 7,758]

Sickener for sure ! As my old man used to say "you pay for your education !!

[beast 1,884]

What I find so sad is that people, everyone, and I'm not excluding myself, have to learn the hard way about things that, had we bothered to truly listen and learn to the experiences of others, we'd never have done. This isn't the first time that I've read of a dog that has been killed by its kennel mates, despite 'apparently' living together for years with no sign of a problem.

 

I'd hazard a guess and say that many, if not most, kennel incidents between bitches can be attributed to their hormonal cycle. If you live with a pack of dogs, and I mean live with, as opposed to kennelling them in a pen, you notice the moment their behaviour starts to change on the run up to a bitch coming in season.

 

Unlike wild canines which generally only allow the top bitches to breed, our domestic bitches do cycle regardless of the position in the pack, and this can cause real problems with the more dominant bitches: like, what the hell does she think she's doing coming in season, that young upstart!

 

Trouble is when you kennel dogs of very different types, sizes and temperaments. Sh*t happens and it's nearly always the little 'un that cops it. I've never kennelled terriers and lurchers together: I did listen to that advice early on in my career, but I've had terrier bitch kill terrier bitch, not kennelled together, but left down the garden for all of 10 minutes while I answered a phone call, and the one that did the killing didn't like the fact that the other bitch was coming into season. At least, that's the only reason I could come up with as they normally got on just fine.

 

Biggest problem with humans is that they are generally oblivious to the more subtle signs of dissension between their mutts. The growling, hackles raised, stiff posture, we all (or should) recognise. But the sideways glance, the positioning of body in relation to the other dog, the lowered or raised head, the angle of the ears, the full-on stare at the other: those things are often not noticed by humans. More's the shame for the dog that cops it.

 

thats a cracking post skycat. i would expand on one point though. wild canines do indeed cycle no matter what their position, just like our domestic dogs, and the top bitch will simply oppres them terribly, forcing them to live on the outskirtsof the pack or to leave altogether; alternatively, and especially if the cycling bitch is willing to stick up for herself, she will simply be killed. and other bitches will join in this persecution. essentially, a wolf pack is really a breeding pair, plus sub adults of both sexes (grown cubs) and one or more extra adult males; the females which are driven out may be lucky enough to become the nucleus of a new pack. there are some good studies on this, eric zimens book is worth a read.

[Alimac2 321]

 

Shame that pal, I bet your trying to suss out exactly what went on to fuel the action.

RIP dot.

 

Thanks mate....................... Been racking my brains and the only thing I can put it down to with something I noticed last night and thats hormones. Now Mrs Raw can be a right horrible Kunt at the wrong stage of a Luna cycle if you get my drift and I noticed the youngest bitch starting to swell up . The rest will follow shortly which is the way it works here. That's all I can put it down to. She was always the bottom of the pack and never was the type to strive for dominance. These two little ones are a different kettle of fish completely , I can see fire in there eyes even at this age. Thats's not me being hopefully it just an honest observation.

 

It's just down to me know not to harness it up ....................No pressure

What you say is right, a lurcher bitch I still have, lived in the house with one of the terrier bitches for ni on 6 years, worked, ate & slept together, best of pals.!! Just as the terrier was coming into season, I left them for 5 minutes on day & learnt the hard way just like you. We all live & learn bud, I just wish I wasn't one of the "it'll never happen to me brigade" & I may of had many more seasons working her..

[whippet 99 2,613]

ive found that dogs see weekness in other dogs and will attack as there canine comrades are vulnerable in changes ...........same as wild pack animals , and hounds in kennels . any change in a dog , injury or coming into season , I may be wrong but im not far off that I believe the changes are led too weeekness which provokes attacks , maybe later on in a dogs life they are that much weeker , you always here they been fine for years , and that's why hot bitches hounds are kept separate from other bitches in hunt kennels, wolfs kill the weak in packs , sustain natural healthy pack ,........ nature maybe cruel but too live you must all provide too hunt and too hunt in animal terms , no animal will provide too a weakness , the strong stay strong but one day they will be killed due too the fact of not providing .

[R.A.W 1,987]

Thanks all for the reply so far........................some very interesting posts.

 

Food for thought thought for sure.

 

My theory on the packs status is that the less dominant members are always testing members just above them which in it self is problematic , bit that's just dogs I suppose . Illness or injury certainly effects the dynamic and any animal should be pulled out until full health is restore.

 

while typing this out a question crossed my mind ....................... Would any of you say a pack that is housed together in work better than a pack kept in separate runs ?

 

I vaguely remember reading about a hound pack that had to be kept separate due to infighting, but the same same could apply to a pack of runners or bushes.

[skycat 6,174]

Would any of you say a pack that is housed together in work better than a pack kept in separate runs ?

 

Not at all. Dogs learn to work together no matter how they are housed. I even get pet dogs from dog walkers who follow the same route as I do round the lakes where I live, come and join in our mini hunts.

 

Living as a pack all the time is very stressful for any dogs, especially those which have a different mindset to one another. Just like people, you shouldn't expect dogs to live happily in a confined space all the time. There are dogs that subtly bully others, moving into their space for no other reason than that they can. This isn't necessarily a dominance issue either, but can be based on dislike: dislike of how the other dog behaves, it's behaviour. Some dogs appear to act like a red rag to a bull in the other's eyes.

Example: Cricket, my Whirrier, is a highly excitable, whizz-about dog. His behaviour acts like a magnet for the equally highly-charged Saluki lurcher, who would like to take him out at the earliest opportunity. They can work together when they are focussed on hunting, but the moment there is nothing to hunt, The big lurcher tries to use the Whirrier as a prey substitute. He tries to do it to all the dogs except those which trashed him hard as a small puppy: the oldest bitches.

So you have two issues going on there: one is the male testosterone-based issue where the lurcher sees the Whirrier both as male competition, as well as the fact that the Whirrier behaves in a manner which incites high prey drive in the lurcher. The white terrier is the same: her behaviour is too different from the lurcher's for him to see her as a colleague, if you like.

 

Terriers generally have a different mental approach to life than a sight hound based dog. And also lurchers can be as different to each other as any other type or breed of dog, depending on what goes into their make up. At one time most rescues treated all lurchers the same with sometimes tragic results, especially in the cases where multiple dogs were forced to live together all the time.

 

For example, my Saluki based lurchers sleep in a big heap all together. The Airedale lurchers, despite their 1/4 Saluki, hate to even touch another dog when they lie down, and the Airedale herself needs her own space or grumbles like hell, though she'd never bite. My OH's Picardy lurchers are the same, and won't share their sleeping/resting space at all. I've found most terriers to be like this, and despite their small size, insist on sole occupation of any bed/area, defending their space with a growl or snap if another dog tries to share.

 

This has nothing to do with pack status, or lack of.

 

My theory on the packs status is that the less dominant members are always testing members just above them which in it self is problematic , bit that's just dogs I suppose

 

No, the less dominant members are often very happy with their position in life, and as long as that is the case you won't have a problem. The problems occur when a dog has upwardly mobile ideas, or if you get two or more that are one a similar level and resent the other/s who seem to be on that level.

 

Taking my own dogs as an example again: The two Airedale lurcher sisters are like chalk and cheese: Lena is not at all dominant, and happily allows Schuck to be the boss of the two of them, and she would never challenge her sister .... BUT, this is always presupposing that you, the owner, allow dogs to find their own niche, place, and if necessary fight it out. Bad idea!

 

In reality, the owner is (should be) the only boss, and any squabbling between the ranks should be stamped on fast at all times. This works fine if you live with your dogs in the house, and are there all the time to control them, but when you stick a heap of dogs in a kennel and walk away, you are asking for trouble. Kennelled dogs behave differently to dogs which have the freedom of large spaces, and a minor snap because of a trodden upon paw or a jostle in a doorway in a house can escalate into something very nasty if the dogs in question are confined in a small space and can't get away from each other and there is no one around to control them.

 

Even though most of my dogs live together, there are some I'd never leave loose when we go out. It's not that they are nasty, but there are two which are pushy, a bit silly and definitely like to wind other dogs up. They are kennelled whenever I go out for more than a few moments. The terriers are kennelled outside, each with their own kennel and run. I would never risk leaving a small dog with the lurchers. When entire (not neutered) dogs get together mob rules apply, and there are also the simmering tensions as bitches' cycles fluctuate.

 

Generally, in domestic dogs, there are only a few months per year when their hormones are not doing much at all. This is all anoestrus. This is after the season, and once the usual phantom pregnancy (whether it is externally visible or not) period has finished. In bitches which cycle 6 monthly you usually have a period of around 3-4 months when they are not hormonal.

 

Then, on the run up to oestrus (the season) their hormone levels begin to change again. They are often more skittish, can hunt much more aggressively, act up with other dogs, and experienced owners and male dogs notice these changes up to a month before they actually come into season. Then you have the season proper, followed by the (usually) 3 month period when the pregnancy hormones are high.

 

Nearly all the problems I've encountered between my dogs have been on the run up to the season, when the bitch's behaviour begins to change. Very submissive, bottom of the pack bitches, may actually get picked on by other bitches at this stage, and at the risk of sounding anthropomorphic, it's almost as though the other bitches were saying: you have no right to come into season because you're a worm on the sole of my shoe.

 

I remember watching a wildlife film about a wolf pack, and the pack actually kicked out their best hunter, a young female the film makers called the Cinderella wolf, because the others were always beating up on her. She was eventually kicked out of the pack. Now what on earth made the pack get rid of one of their best hunters? I have numerous theories to this question, but none that stand up in scientific circles.

 

My favourite theory is that this wolf would capable of surviving alone, so she would be the best choice to start a new pack, providing she found a mate, which she did, according to the film. Whether this was a cleverly put together bit of film to make the viewer think that they lived happily ever after, or was actually true, I don't know. But could Nature really put in place such a strategy? There are many unexplained aspects of animal behaviour which defy apparent logic, so who knows.

[R.A.W 1,987]

.......................... That's me told

 

Great reply thanks. There's a lot to think about there

 

It's not that I don't value your opinion but there's still part of me that feels a pack that lives together in harmony will without doubt hunt better and in a more effective manner than a group of strangers. To elaborate more I must mention when I use the term pack I'm referring to a pack of hounds ( sight/ scent). I've most certainly come to conclusion that housing a mix is a bad Idea and not housing more than 2 terriers in a run.

 

My comment about less submissive animals testing they're leaders should of been worded better. Test may of not been the correct term but if any surely with they're in depth intuition as soon as an opening/opportunity arises ( through illness injury or old age) the other member will step up the ranks.

[dytkos 17,974]

Gutted for you mate but deep down you know it's your own fault.

You won't make that mistake again and I hope anyone reading this posts learns something too.

 

Cheers, D.

[skycat 6,174]

Harmony is a dangerous word to use. No living creature lives totally in harmony with its fellows: you only have to look at humans to see that. There is always competition, greed, possessiveness in all animals, and more than anything else, the access to food and the right to reproduce. Those are the most important things in any animal's life.

When we want a load of dogs to leave peacefully together we have to put in place various rules, laws that WE lay down, not the dogs.

 

Of course dogs that have learned to work together work better than those that don't know each other at all. They have learned to read each other, to know that when the terrier bays in a bramble it has found some game. The lurchers learn to put themselves in the best place for a bolt, etc etc. But that has nothing to do with how they live when they are not working. You can take a group of friends, each with their own dogs, who go out regularly together, and their dogs will learn to work just as well with one another as if they lived together all the time.

 

The problem with housing together is mostly down to the fact that humans have bred different dogs for different tasks, and the drive we see in a terrier is often much harder than the drive we see in a lurcher, depending on the breeding of course. I have deliberately bred my line of terrier to be submissive to the lurchers as I don't want terriers to dispute a catch when there's bigger dogs all intent on claiming the catch. The way I treat the terriers, kennelling them outside as opposed to letting them live with the lurchers, also ensures that they remain bottom of the pile: but that only works if you have a terrier with the correct temperament to work with a pack.

 

But I still wouldn't expect my terriers to live with the lurchers as they (the terriers) are very possessive of their bed space as I said before.

 

I'd say that most terriers don't have the pack mentality. They are ultra possessive, and if you have a lurcher that tells the terrier to let go of a rabbit, and the terrier is not of the temperament to do that, then you have a problem and possibly a dead terrier, and at the very least a rabbit in bits and dogs that swallow their catch once it's torn open.

 

Putting a successful bushing pack together means weeding out any dogs that don't play by the rules you put in place. They have to be your rules, not the rules the dogs would set up with no intervention from you. I have an old lurcher who will retrieve any rabbit from thick cover, and I make sure I take her out with dogs that don't retrieve. No matter how well you train a terrier or small possessive dog to retrieve, it's a different matter when that dog has to come out of cover carrying a rabbit that the big dogs want to take for their own. So the terrier stays with its rabbit in the bramble rather than face the big dogs on the outside. There's not many people who can train an entire pack of lurchers and terriers to respect each other's catches. I certainly haven't been able to, so I concentrate on getting the very possessive dogs to retrieve to me, no matter what other dogs there are around. They pretty soon learnt that their catch is 'safe' with me and that I'll keep the big dogs off them when they carry their rabbit to me.

 

There is also a dominance thing here too, for no matter how hard you try and train a 'bottom of the pile' dog to retrieve its rabbit to you when there are other dogs around, it won't be able to. That same 'bottom of the pile' dog will happily retrieve when it's out on its own. I have both lurchers and terriers like that.

 

Fox hounds and beagles have been bred for centuries to work together without showing aggression to each other, and to operate with a different mindset to a terrier, for example. Lurchers and terriers are mostly bred to work on their own, but many cooperate to work together because the dogs as a species is a social animal, and smart enough to realise that many noses, and pairs of eyes and ears are more conducive to a successful hunt than a single animal on its own.

 

BUT, you still get the solitary dog, the one that won't work with the pack, that prefers to do its own thing, successfully or not. It's all to do with the mindset, its ancestors, its breeding. Is that the Cinderella wolf? Is that the one that inadvertently sets the teeth of other dogs on edge? It may live with the others quite happily, and never cause a problem at home, or it may deliberately seek to wind its pack mates up through nipping, irritating them, never happy unless it is deeply in prey drive, using its pack mates as substitute prey when there's no real prey around?

 

Just because a lurcher or terrier is bred in a certain way, with certain breeds in its ancestry, doesn't mean that it will behave in the way you expect. Each dog is an individual, and moulded as much by its environment as its genes.

[whippet 99 2,613]

skycat you cover every possible aspect , truth is we wont know for sure , but covering every angle from domestic too wild one part will be true ,.lol great knowledge all the same , dog hounds are fighting and killing this time of year aswell more now than usual , could it be when there mixed with the bitches on exercise ???, but kenneled seperately , what would you put that down too . then obviously the culprits are put down too avoid anymore fatalities

[R.A.W 1,987]

Gutted for you mate but deep down you know it's your own fault.

You won't make that mistake again and I hope anyone reading this posts learns something too.

 

Cheers, D.

 

Without a doubt I'm to blame. It was very naive to think I had the exception to the rule. Hopefully someone will take heed

[socks 32,253]

That's shit news mate ... I have always kept my dogs penned together two at a time and I have never had a problem including lurchers and terriers ... But I do insist on having a neutral pack ... I don't allow any hierarchy amongst my dogs I am the alpha and that's it ... My dogs can chew on the same bone with no grumbles eat from the same bowl and sleep in the same bed without any hassle ... I don't know if I have been lucky or as I say its the fact that I don't allow the dogs a hierarchy but it works for me .........

[weasle 1,119]

skycat you cover every possible aspect , truth is we wont know for sure , but covering every angle from domestic too wild one part will be true ,.lol great knowledge all the same , dog hounds are fighting and killing this time of year aswell more now than usual , could it be when there mixed with the bitches on exercise ???, but kenneled seperately , what would you put that down too . then obviously the culprits are put down too avoid anymore fatalities

Boredom,Lack of hunting,Lack of discipline, to fit ,bitches fight nearly as much would have thought.

Found lurchers quite happy to live together to be honest,never had a problem.

Terriers different though, terrier with a lurcher is going to end very badly very quickly because of size difference.

If you work a wood for 10 years then your dog hit a tree and killed its self would you never work it again,Or just accept it as a risk of something that could happen?

Personally have kept a terrier with a lurcher but you know its a big risk.

Always kept lurchers together 2 to a kennel and would see the risks as absolute minimal.(cue fight)

Edited July 6, 2014 by weasle

[R.A.W 1,987]

That's shit news mate ... I have always kept my dogs penned together two at a time and I have never had a problem including lurchers and terriers ... But I do insist on having a neutral pack ... I don't allow any hierarchy amongst my dogs I am the alpha and that's it ... My dogs can chew on the same bone with no grumbles eat from the same bowl and sleep in the same bed without any hassle ... I don't know if I have been lucky or as I say its the fact that I don't allow the dogs a hierarchy but it works for me .........

 

Thanks mate

 

It's important to me also that I'm the leader too. I have to be or I'll be in trouble with this lot. The idea of a neutral Pack is something I never really thought possible because by the very nature of a canine they will be a dominant or submissive in varying degrees.