Dear Mila, the world's best dog, has suddenly revealed her darker nature: chicken killer. A couple days ago she ripped Pokey's head off while the girls were free-ranging in the backyard. John and Emily were beside themselves and vowed to keep more vigilant watch on the pup.
Luciya was upset because Pokey was the chicken that she named. "Why did Mila have to kill my chicken," she wondered. It is interesting, in a bleakly ironic way, that many of the stories Luciya makes up end with "and then they ripped his head off!"
A friend of John and Emily's gave them her favorite chicken since she was having issues with her landlord about keeping chickens.The deal was that If the new chicken got along with Heena and Shybone, she might become a permanent addition to the flock.
Alas, that was not to be. This morning, Mila tore out the chicken wire in the coop, ripped the new chicken's neck open and was forcing her way into the nesting loft to kill the other two when John and Emily, alerted by the commotion, managed to stop her.
John has an article on how to train dogs not to kill chickens. So Mila's stint in rehab begins.
We all hope it will be successful.
P.
2 comments:
I have had good success with training my three dogs (alas, all poodle-ish but a pack nonetheless) and a cat to ignore my chickens. It can be done and all is peaceful on my little farm with the exception of the hawks that hunt overhead. Unless a dog has an unrelenting prey instinct, you can indeed teach her to ignore and even protect the chickens; most dogs do. Finally, keeping chickens is about coming to terms with death more often than we care to. Nearly every being on the planet loves to eat chicken.
How DO you train a dog not to eat chickens? In fact, how do you train people not to eat chickens?
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