Dogs & Snakes

[5bandit5]

Hi Guys.
I'm very new to this kinda husbandry, however, my male Border Collie, is obsessed with SneakySnake, the feeling appears to be mutual. I trust the dog implicitly, here's the question:
Are we teaching our dogs, to get too near other snakes? I live in "copperhead heaven". Thanks for reading!

 

[CAV]

I wouldn't be too worried. I have a friend whose dog was bitten by a copperhead as a puppy and the dog is now cautious around the CB animals. I think animals have an instinct regarding that is a threat and what isn't.

 

[MegF.]

That is not true at all. I do a snake avoidance training program for dogs, and we have many that have been bitten multiple times by rattler's. Some dogs are naturally curious, and some are voracious hunters (can we say terriers,and border collies?). The snake's fangs are usually so sharp that there isn't a lot of pain associated with the bite. That comes later, so they really don't associate the bite with the pain. Don't count on a bite to deter. I've seen too many that have not been stopped by it.

 

[CAV]

That is not true at all.

You base your opinions on your experience and I base mine on my experience. They are merely different, not wrong.

Some dogs are naturally curious, and some are voracious hunters.

And there are just as many that aren't........Have you ever hunted with a well trained dog? A terrier would destroy a bird that a retreiver would handle with kid gloves.

My response was based on *my* experiences in the field. I have encountered wildlife on more than one continent and I've lived most of my life in a region where venemous snakes are a dime a dozen (especially copperheads). Snakes and dogs just aren't that frequent of a problem, IMHO.

We'll just agree to disagree

 

[MegF.]

Sounds good to me! I've lived in Rattlesnake country all my life, and have been training dogs off of them for the last 8 years. I usually have at least 12-14 dogs a year that have been bitten more than once. These are usually someone's pets, not often field dogs.

 

[Neumann]

Greetings,

Our dog and our snakes have something in common: they both eat mice. The only difference is that our dog catches and kills them, and the snakes are served up F/T.

We've had our two Corn's for about 5 months now and our dog is clueless that they exist. Apparently they produce very little oder or else she would be on them quickly - the alpha female that she is!

When we first setup the vivs we would occasionally find the dog in the snake room during the day. Now she never goes in there. Our policy has been to keep her in the dark as long as possible. She definitely can't be trusted!!!


Cheers,
Jason

 

[Joje126]

I have a 9 year old black lab who definitely seems to have at least a few snake instincts. My older corn is often allowed supervised time on the floor, and the dog is usually right there to watch. The dog is always curious about the snake and will sniff at him, but if the snake advances towards him, or I try to get to close to the dogs head with the snake, he always backs away and watches from a safer distance.

The catch is that I have always had a lot of pets and at 9, the dog as seen alot of other animals. He's pretty conditioned to seeing anything unusual around the house.

 

[MegF.]

Must be a lab thing. Even though she was trained off snakes 10 yrs. ago, she still finds C.S. too fascinating to pass up. If she's crawling in the viv, the dog sits and watches, and the rest of the time she's sniffing all around the area.:licklips: My Ridgeback doesn't even care about the snake at all. Never even looks at it, except to see if I have some sort of food item in my hand when I'm holding her. As soon as she sees it's nothing good, she ignores it.:boring:

 

[Rachel]

My dog (a lurcher) is very interested in my snakes but will back off if they get too close. Likewise the snakes seem interested in the dog, or maybe they are just sensing somewhere warm to cuddle up! Meg (my dog) will eat snake sheds if given the chance (not something we encourage) so I'm not sure how much I could trust her if she was left unsupervised with an uncaged snake.

Finally, in our animal behaviour course, we were taught that ALL dogs have an innate behavioural response to snakes whether thay have encountered them or not. The degree of this behaviour obviously differs from dog to dog. The thing I found interesting is that many researchers apparantly have concluded that when (and if) your dog does that lil circle thing before he/she poos or lies down, its apparantly to pat down vegetation to ensure no snakes are around. Just a thought....

 

[MegF.]

That's interesting. I thought they were just crushing down the vegetation. I hear the same things about horses having an inbred fear of snakes, yet I've never had one spook at a snake unless the owner did. My horse was bitten by a rattler (fortunately a dry bite) because he didn't even react to it's presence. We usually have one or two that are bitten a year, and often, it's on the nose.

 

[Rachel]

Yup, I had a horse bitten by an adder. The horse didn't seem to see the snake but maybe if it had it would have dodged out the way! I think some of these evolutionary instincts are slowly being bred out so to speak. Not purposely but when we cross breed you get a hybrid behaviour (ie crossing an arab to a thouroughbred to get best of both breeds). maybe this is influencing other factors that we don't know about?