Lucy Playing with Prey!

This lovely young lady is Lucy, a hound mix that has been coming to Frisky Fido for about nine months now.

Yesterday Lucy had a spectacular time with this old squeaky dragon toy.

For Lucy, this is not a dragon toy, but her "prey".  For Lucy, as for all dogs, playing is more than fun. Playing is practice for living, and killing prey is deeply ingrained in Lucy's genes.

She is shaking the toy so vigorously that it cannot be caught on camera, even with a fast lens.  But what she is really doing is shaking her prey in order to snap it's neck, a method of killing that works quite well for dogs and other canines.

But dogs are not wild animals.  They are a big part of our lives, and they need to live in harmony with us.  They need to obey our rules in order for all of us to remain safe.  Lucy's genes are telling her to hang on to her "kill", but I'm telling her to drop it.  If another dog tried to take her toy, she'd growl and maybe even snap to let the other dog know she ain't sharing.  Lucy knows the command "Drop It", but she really doesn't want to.  She is almost - but not quite - growling at me!

 Would you know what to do in this situation?  Would your kids know how to react?  I hope so.  In this case it took oly a few seconds before the toy was in the trash and Lucy was giving me kisses. She is learning to be a great dog, and she is learning fast.  But there are two sides to every coin, and two entities in every relationship. We need to learn to speak a little dog language in order to make both our lives better and safer.