7 ms·
> "The way they do it is the dog grabs the rat in it's mouth and shakes its head wildly." my dog is a terrier/spitz mix and shows this behavior in play (from t
by clairity 6y ago
> "The way they do it is the dog grabs the rat in it's mouth and shakes its head wildly."
my dog is a terrier/spitz mix and shows this behavior in play (from the terrier side, the spitz side just makes her pretty =). she'll grab a stick or other small item and shake it wildly while bucking about. most people think it's hilarious until i tell them why she does it. =D
- alistairSH 6y agoMy 7lb cotton ball Maltese does the same thing. It's hilarious. He also loves to chase squirrels. Same dog yelped like he was being flayed alive when a neighborhood cat playfully swatted his nose. Ridiculous creature.
- tomcam 6y agoI love that description, thanks.
- cptskippy 6y agoMany people forget that dog breeds exist for specific purposes and not just for looks. Just as mastiffs were bread to pull knights from horses, many small dogs were bread for rodent and pest control.
- mncharity 6y agoYears back I worked on a "configure a dog" educational interactive. IIRC, dogs share a common hunting sequence of behaviors, and some of their domesticated diversity stems from being able to genetically adjust the strength of those behaviors. So a retriever for instance, has the "bite hard" and "shake it" dialed down, and the "carry it home" dialed up.
- xeromal 6y agoSounds like an RPG. haha
- mncharity 6y agoInteresting analogy. I recently saw outreach content that described rain/snow/hail formation in terms of a cooking recipe (eg, stir hail several times up and down past the frost line until it grows to ...). I wonder what other familiar frames might be used to scaffold understanding? Some time back I was pondering how one might teach category theory to kids, by presenting it as cross-cutting patterns in everyday life (eg non-zero one-directional movement along a closed finite path eventually comes back around, as in simple board games, a clock's "we missed 12 today, but we can do it at 12 tomorrow", or "oops, passed an open parking spot - drive around the block".)
- jamiek88 6y agoMy dog is similar and caught a rat once in the garden. Ever heard a rat scream? I ran around the corner to see what the commotion was and he had it in his jaws shaking his head violently. Snapped the rats back, then dropped it and walked away. I put the rat out of its misery with a spade then buried it. Talk about adrenaline! But yeah rats scream like a little girl screams. It’s fucking horrifying.
- BoiledCabbage 6y agoInteresting - only time I've heard a rat scream from a dog killing it, it sounded exactly like a squeaky toy. Which was a bit of a shocking realization.
- ackbar03 6y agoYour adrenaline or the dogs?
- jamiek88 6y agoMine! The dog was licking where his balls used to be like nothing happened a few moments later. Way before my heart rate came down, he was napping.
- Igelau 6y agoMy grandparents had a West Highland Terrier. Gentle little cream puff of a dog -- just like the foofoo dog you see on Cesar dog food. Except she had this little game she liked to play with the voles in the yard where she'd flip them into the air and fatally gore them with her teeth.
- fy20 6y agoThis breed was originally created to hunt small rodents on farms and such.