Dogs killing rats

We've owned a few dogs that easily killed rats around our farm- some are breed for the act. I consider it a good thing. Although, you might want to check with the neighbor and make sure he is not poisoning the rats. If your dog eats a rat with poison in it's system it could make the dog very sick and possibly even kill it.

likely, your dog killed the rat. mine have killed dozens of vermin. a good thing.

Many years ago, we had a couple of pups, German shepherd mixes of some kind, who loved to kill rats. They slept outside, in the garage. They would appear on the doorstep in the morning, when we got up, and they would bring offerings of dead rats. I would praise them for it, and the take the rats by the end of the tails, whirl them around like a sling, and pitch them into the gully on the other side of the road. The pups seemed to resent that though, and they stopped bringing us dead rat offerings.

But they didn't stop killing rats, though, as i learned a couple of weeks later. I went out to the garage to see the pups, and sat down on the old sofa we had put there for them to sleep on. As i sat down, i was engulfed in this horrible miasma of decay. I lifted the cushions on the sofa, and discovered the decaying remains of about eight or nine rats. The pups were really excited, as though they would say: "Cool, huh ? ! ? ! ?"

Love it.

They were good dogs . . . Georgette and Abe . . .

My dogs have also killed vermin, usually opossums or ground hogs. The squirrels on our property are the fastest in the county.

I figure that they're just dogs being dogs. I draw the line, though, when they start bringing their "trophies" into the house. One night, after I got the "kids" into the house and (I thought, wrong as it turned out) away from the possum they'd been hunting, one of the dogs dropped the varmint at my feet as she went trotting past me. Another morning I woke up to a dead ground hog in the house. Oh joy!

Every time they've done this, I toss the vermin over the fence. I most certainly hope that my kids don't start hiding their trophies in our furniture!

My husband remarked recently that in 2000 years when the archaeologists dig around our fence and find the bones, they will conclude that we 2009-dwellers participated in some strange rituals, judging from the animal bones . . . .

Agreed - my dog is a breed that was breed for these purposes. And also on the sick part. He did someone eat some rodent type and got sick. The doctor determined it was rodent from a stool test.

PFFT! It's the dog. It's in their nature to hunt down smaller animals. I have a beagle and he can find a mouse within a single minute in my grandmothers large farm. He tortures them to death. He catches it, releases it, lets it run off a bit, then catches it again. Eventually it dies and he gets bored and walks off.