Born for the chase: how working dogs kill their quarry

Dogs are predators. All of them. Anything they joined the human race for involves that predator instinct, enhanced by selective breeding and training so that their desire to predate can be harnessed for our benefit.

For instance, we breed and train for a “stop” in the hunting sequence, so that gundogs find, flush and stop, and working collies find, then drive the “prey”, the sheep, towards the shepherd to be “killed”.

If we watch wild canines being predatory, we can learn a lot about our dogs, but human imagination can be limited and we can be told a lot of rubbish by those who don’t have the mental powers to analyse what their eyes are seeing.

What a wolf pack actually does to a herd of deer

Watch a wildlife film showing a pack of wolves working a herd of deer. Any one of those deer can terminally injure a wolf, so they don’t just pile into the herd willy-nilly, and they don’t all pick one each and attack it. Instead, they set the herd running and hold off until one splits from the main group. That’s the weak one, and the pack will focus on bringing it to book. They only need one deer; the rest can carry on. Nor, despite the common use of the phrase, do they “pull it down”. To do so would involve far more effort, far more risk, than would be survivable. Instinct is a wonderful thing.

How a hunting dog brings quarry down

Until 2005, in the days when the law was far more lenient about hunting, observing the instinctive process of a dog that was intent on grassing a deer proved that risk to the predator was kept to a minimum. Dogs never pull anything down – they trip up their quarry. It is therefore the running deer’s own momentum that brings it down at speed, with minimum risk to the dog.

There are various ways hunting dogs achieve this. Some will knock one of its hind legs across the other; some will run level with the shoulder and smack into it when both of its forelegs are off the ground.

I knew a show-bred saluki that would run parallel with its quarry – sighthounds are much faster at cruising speed than a deer – then jump on to the deer’s back and catch hold of its neck just behind the head. The resulting somersault would break the deer’s neck. The art of the hound was in letting go of the deer at the right moment so as not to be injured herself, and she got it right every time.

Equally, in pre-2005 days, with a single dog used for fox control, a number of techniques would achieve the result without the dog being bitten. Running parallel with it pushed the fox too hard to escape or retaliate. Once the energy had been taken out of it, the dog would reach across the back with a spine- and rib-shattering bite.

I had one lurcher who would reach down across the spine just in front of the pelvis, delivering a massive bite and shake that was instantly fatal. As we worked with free-range poultry at the time, her talents were well used. To deliver a coup de grace bite, a dog needs a long jaw. Nearly all wild canines have long muzzles and that’s why.

Ratting terriers that know their job don’t waste time or energy on shaking a rat they have caught – one bite and drop is what they do. Sometimes an old terrier in the grip of senility will shake a caught rat, but career terriers that do a lot of ratting won’t waste time and energy like that – they want to be ready for the next bolt.

Why a rabbiting dog delivers its quarry unmarked

Rabbit-catching dogs don’t damage the rabbit, but chase, pick up and retrieve, delivering to hand an unmarked quarry. Meat destined for the table shouldn’t be damaged and dogs have helped feed us for millennia. Dogs used for this purpose can easily be trained to predate only certain species; a dog fired up from catching a marauding fox in the poultry yard will rarely redirect its predatory instincts to the fowl.

Some breeds have, over many years, had the predatory instinct mostly bred out of them; these are our gundogs, fetching shot game without seeing it as food. This can go wrong, however, and a number of well-bred gundogs turn predator when at liberty among freshly shot game. It is very common and perfectly natural.

To acknowledge the killing power of the average dog is not a flaw. Instead, it is a wise acknowledgement of the power and mindset that help our working dogs do what we want in the way we want it.

Jackie Drakeford is a working dog instructor and behaviourist with a special interest in lurchers and terriers.