I am a great peruser (is that a word?) of Rat Terrier websites, more specifically other breeders' websites. On many websites I see the words "hunt[ing] ability" and "prey drive" used over and over, and I wonder what exactly those words mean to those breeders.
I found a good definition here, that "prey drive [is the] the canine’s inherited need to engage in the type behaviors that would lead to the capture of food if they were in the wild." In my experience, a prey driven dog means "if it is small and fuzzy and moves fairly quickly the dog will try to kill whatever it is." A highly prey driven dog will attempt to kill without regard to life or limb or it's owner screaming at it to get the hell out of the road. Those kinds of dogs rarely make good family pets mostly due to their owner's inability to maintain good control over the dog.
Supposedly, one can redirect a highly driven prey dog into a highly driven performance dog in one venue or another; adherents to this statement include people involved in flyball or agility. I disagree with this assessment, and mainly because I fail to see the relationship between a dog following/focusing on a trainer's commands and its innate desire to kill something that crosses its path. I will say that the ability of both kinds of dogs to focus on something for an extended period of time is incredible - and perhaps that is where the link is.
"Hunting ability" is the ability of the dog to assist a human in hunting a specific kind of game. A hunting dog is a dog who is trained by its human in some capacity or another to find/flush/retrieve/etc. game without regards to other kinds of game in the vicinity. For example, I would not want my hunting dog to be tracking possums when I really want it to flush rabbits for me. A hunting dog also has also been trained (I will say except for some go to ground terriers) to not be gun shy. Sometimes this is easier said than done, but a good hunting dog will head to the truck and wait for you when you start getting out your weapon of choice.
Foundation laid; forward onto my semi-rant:
When a breeder says that they breed for prey drive, what exactly does that mean? Most dogs have some type of prey drive in them, and I daresay that most people would not want to own a dog that has a high prey drive lest they start killing indiscriminately. I know of a terrier who killed a baby goat through a fence, and it's owner bragged about the dog's "high prey drive." Is that something that we want in a dog whose offspring 99% of the time will end up in a pet home? And believe me, there is nothing worse than having a dog that is so prey driven that it will get out of any type of containment that you might have built for it to go and kill the neighbor's chickens.
My point is that when I see those words, there are so many questions that I want to ask, and really, the first one is "do you know what that even means?"
When a breeder says that they breed for hunting ability, again, what exactly does that mean? I rarely see or hear about breeders being out with their dogs hunting game. And when I say hunting I mean that the dog has a specific job to do and is looking for a specific kind of game. Sure, it will tree that squirrel and bark its fool head off, but will it also do the same for anything in that tree? Will it get off track of the rabbit in search of that groundhog? Most all dogs have the ability to use their nose or their eyes to spot something and give it chase and perhaps make a kill; that's prey drive, not hunting ability.
If a breeder says that they breed for hunting ability and have no pictures or stories to back up their assertion, then I want to call them out in a way that is best described in this picture:
Prove it.
I found a good definition here, that "prey drive [is the] the canine’s inherited need to engage in the type behaviors that would lead to the capture of food if they were in the wild." In my experience, a prey driven dog means "if it is small and fuzzy and moves fairly quickly the dog will try to kill whatever it is." A highly prey driven dog will attempt to kill without regard to life or limb or it's owner screaming at it to get the hell out of the road. Those kinds of dogs rarely make good family pets mostly due to their owner's inability to maintain good control over the dog.
Supposedly, one can redirect a highly driven prey dog into a highly driven performance dog in one venue or another; adherents to this statement include people involved in flyball or agility. I disagree with this assessment, and mainly because I fail to see the relationship between a dog following/focusing on a trainer's commands and its innate desire to kill something that crosses its path. I will say that the ability of both kinds of dogs to focus on something for an extended period of time is incredible - and perhaps that is where the link is.
"Hunting ability" is the ability of the dog to assist a human in hunting a specific kind of game. A hunting dog is a dog who is trained by its human in some capacity or another to find/flush/retrieve/etc. game without regards to other kinds of game in the vicinity. For example, I would not want my hunting dog to be tracking possums when I really want it to flush rabbits for me. A hunting dog also has also been trained (I will say except for some go to ground terriers) to not be gun shy. Sometimes this is easier said than done, but a good hunting dog will head to the truck and wait for you when you start getting out your weapon of choice.
Foundation laid; forward onto my semi-rant:
When a breeder says that they breed for prey drive, what exactly does that mean? Most dogs have some type of prey drive in them, and I daresay that most people would not want to own a dog that has a high prey drive lest they start killing indiscriminately. I know of a terrier who killed a baby goat through a fence, and it's owner bragged about the dog's "high prey drive." Is that something that we want in a dog whose offspring 99% of the time will end up in a pet home? And believe me, there is nothing worse than having a dog that is so prey driven that it will get out of any type of containment that you might have built for it to go and kill the neighbor's chickens.
My point is that when I see those words, there are so many questions that I want to ask, and really, the first one is "do you know what that even means?"
When a breeder says that they breed for hunting ability, again, what exactly does that mean? I rarely see or hear about breeders being out with their dogs hunting game. And when I say hunting I mean that the dog has a specific job to do and is looking for a specific kind of game. Sure, it will tree that squirrel and bark its fool head off, but will it also do the same for anything in that tree? Will it get off track of the rabbit in search of that groundhog? Most all dogs have the ability to use their nose or their eyes to spot something and give it chase and perhaps make a kill; that's prey drive, not hunting ability.
If a breeder says that they breed for hunting ability and have no pictures or stories to back up their assertion, then I want to call them out in a way that is best described in this picture:
Prove it.
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