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Post by unclejoe on Oct 5, 2017 17:29:46 GMT -5
I've had a couple dogs that I trusted around the ferrets one was a huge chocolate lab mix the other was a Shih Tzu Shih Tzu was too dumb to care and Roscoe the lab was just a gentle giant he actually enjoyed playing with the ferret we also had a Yorky that we could never trust around thembecause he played rough. That said Darlene had a Rottweiler that she dearly loved in the blink of an eye she killed her first ferret just out of an instinctive reaction after they had lived together for a few months something to think about
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Post by runningdog on Oct 5, 2017 19:02:52 GMT -5
This whole thing with different species playing together is tricky. Body-language is different, vocalisations are different, reactions are different. It comes down to knowing your dogs and your ferrets right through - and I don’t know Angus well enough yet to even guess.
There’s also the problem of the familiar item in an unfamiliar setting, which can totally change a dog’s reactions. I’ve had a working terrier who would run down a wild rat or rabbit, kill it and bring me the corpse outside - but who would share the bed with my house rabbit and free-range pet rats at home. I’ve kept a ferret in the house with a house rabbit before, too - no way was that ferret ever going to socialise with the rabbit, nor the rabbit with the ferret! It was strict time-management and making sure one cage was locked and the room door closed tight before opening the other. I’ve known dogs (not mine) who’d let the cat walk on them in the house - but put them out in the garden and the cat better run like stink!
I don’t know what Angus would do if he could reach out and touch a dog. He just looks at them through the cage wire, and he doesn’t react when he’s in my hand or lap, restrained, and a whippet sniffs his tail or back, but then he seems perfectly calm right up to the moment when he bites, when he’s biting, which is not exactly an encouragement to experiment!
I know my whippets are trustworthy when we’re working a rabbit warren with the ferrets, or when the ferrets are in a cage, playpen or behind any kind of barrier. They were raised with calm, sensible working ferrets from the day they opened their eyes, being from working breeders, and they’re fine around calm, sensible working ferrets, or a ferret in my hand. I’ve never tried letting a ferret run around their feet and they’re not used to seeing them in the house, running around dooking and dancing. I am absolutely certain my high-prey-drive snap-dogs (an old name for the whippet breed!) would kill a ferret who bit them, without hesitation. I don’t know if I could teach them to play gently with a ferret - they’re both highly competitive, quite high-dominance bitches who play rough together and I’m the only person who can take food off them or break up a fight when they’ve been getting on each other’s nerves.
I’d be quite happy taking Angus and the whippets out working together tomorrow, but I’m in no hurry to let them socialise in the house. They can talk through the wire and the dogs can sniff Angus’s butt when he’s in my hand, but that’s as far as we’re going for the foreseeable future.
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Post by runningdog on Oct 5, 2017 19:30:01 GMT -5
Ferrets don’t really hunt alongside dogs or vice versa. They have different hunting strategies so they have different roles in the team. It’s my job to get everyone to the warren, net the holes and then pop a ferret down near a hole and shut up. The ferret’s job is to decide the hole’s occupied (or not), wiggle his tail and disappear underground. Once rabbits start moving, the dogs will let me know - their ears focus, they’re pointing at the sound underground. If the rabbit hits a net, my job is to replace the net, kill the captive rabbit and then disentangle the net from the rabbit, ready to reset it. If the rabbit comes out of a hole I failed to net, or gets past the net in some way, it’s the dog’s job to chase it down. At the end of the day it’s the job of the ferrets and dogs to sleep while I pick all the nets up and get everyone home again.
When a ferret’s working, he’s not dooking and dancing. He’s underground, sniffing unhurriedly along a warren and terrorising the rabbits. Some dook while they’re doing it - my old lurchers used to track Bubbles, who had verbal diarrhoea, like radars. All I had to do was watch their ears and triangulate - they were more accurate than the electronic ferret-finder. Some work silently and the only way you know they’re in there is by the rabbits exploding out of the holes and either hitting your nets or legging it into the distance at 30mph.
When a working ferret comes out of a hole, he’s not dooking and dancing either. He comes out quietly, maybe sniffing along a rabbit’s trail, and it doesn’t trigger the sight-hound’s reflex to ‘chase the thing that ran’.
Ratting with ferrets and dogs can be more exciting and close-quarters; while I’ve done it with my old business and the lurchers, they were more laid-back than the whippets are. Again, though, a ferret hunting rats is serious, quiet and focussed, not bounding about war-dancing and dooking.
What it comes down to is an off-duty ferret dancing round the floor dooking his head off is a totally different critter from a serious and focussed ferret in the field, quietly going about his ‘job’. My ferrets and dogs have always worked together and been around each other under supervision - but they’ve never been allowed to play together.
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Post by LindaM on Oct 5, 2017 20:17:46 GMT -5
You should totally take some photos or a video if possible when you go out working with the ferrets and whippets. I'm sure some of the members on where, myself included would love to see that and get better insight into it.
I've seen some footages before where people were a bit more willy-nilly about just having their hunting dogs and ferrets together and I admit, the thought has always terrified me, so pardon if that previous sentence sounded stupid as h*ll. As usual, the most reliable information doesn't always get passed along as fast as the poorer examples of things. X.x
I've owned some high-prey drive Jack Russells before, and I know for sure I wouldn't be keen on trusting them near any ferrets. They were hunting dogs through and through, and anything to come into their domain (I grew up on an estate with my grandparents) didn't usually last long either, be it gecko, frog, field mouse, snake or skunk. My rabbits were left alone because they had a rather reinforced cage my grandad had built himself. I had a turtle who died a sad, brutal death at their hands when the maid accidentally let the dogs out while it was in the yard.. cracked like an egg would be a friendly description. I've seen them play a vicious, deadly game of tug-o-war with a live skunk.. not so alive within seconds, and much faster than a shocked kid could react, though the memory will forever be etched in my mind. They were great on jack rabbit hunting in the farm fields though, or taking care of any that a poorly fired rifle shot didn't kill.
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Post by runningdog on Oct 6, 2017 3:47:39 GMT -5
Always seems to be the case that the ‘wrong way’ to do things spreads faster and further than the ‘right way’! There are, alas, too many people who don’t respect their working animals or their quarry. There are horror stories every year of people shooting their own dogs or ferrets accidentally, of dogs killing ferrets and ferrets biting dogs. My dogs are taught to retrieve live to hand, so they don’t bite down on what they catch (unless it’s rats) but bring them to me, unharmed. I did once have an incident with a ferret and a lurcher, just in the garden - someone saw movement and shouted ‘get it!’ and an obedient lurcher jumped into a tuft of grass and retrieved a perfectly unhurt but somewhat startled ferret, then put him back down again quickly, looking ashamed of herself. I had words with the person concerned about identifying your quarry properly! It didn’t damage the relationship between dog and ferret, fortunately, but with a hard-mouthed dog or a ferret who reacted differently to being picked up by a dog, it would have been a very different ending. I don’t normally have time to think about photos or video when I’m ferreting - I’ve got the ferrets, dogs and rabbits to think about and that’s a lot for my brain to keep on top of! The bloke who bred one of my dogs wrote this article, though, and his photos are far better than mine (he does it professionally). ewhippetzine.com/wwuk1.html I have my reservations about the use of milk, even goat’s milk, as a training aid for ferret/dog socialisation; it’s traditional and it works, and I suppose, given the relative sizes of ferret’s tongue and dog’s tongue, the ferret involved doesn’t get much of the milk! I use a saucer of beaten raw egg instead, and both dog and ferret should have had a good meal not long before the initial meetings. The fawn b**ch featured in the article, Vixen, is the grandmother of my senior b**ch and the ferret is one of Paul’s ferrets - he keeps in touch with pups sired by his stud-dog Sagar, and all his animals are well-handled, superbly trained and cared for like stars. His knowledge of his animals, the countryside and his quarry are second to none. I’ve been to visit a few times with my dogs, and every time I learn more - stopping in for a cup of tea is like a masterclass in rabbiting, whether dog-handling, ferret-handling, making and setting nets or whatever! I’ve been working dogs and ferrets together to rabbits for quarter of a century and Paul’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know on the subject. The article only gives a very brief outline of how a working pup in this country is introduced to ferrets to ensure they’re socialised properly to each other - it’s pretty much the same for ferrets in reverse. An adult, sensible and well-socialised trusted dog is introduced to the ferret kits through the wire as soon as they’re out of the nest and they’re nip-trained to dogs while they’re still too small to hurt the dog, and taught to trust and relax around them; they learn dogs are ‘part of the furniture’ and nothing to worry about. The dog, when the kits are so small, will also regard them more tolerantly - rather like puppies, they’re allowed to get away with a little more. It’s still one ferret, one human, one dog for one-on-one training, though - you never just let your dog dive in there with a litter of kits. They get used to being around each other, but they’re not left unsupervised or allowed to play together. I never forget what a dog *can* do. Twenty-plus years ago I introduced a fairly assertive Jack Russell pup to my two lurchers. All went fine, pup was accepted and included into the ‘pack’ without any trouble. One day some months later, I heard a snarl, a snap and a yelp and glanced round to see the now-adolescent pup hurriedly jumping down off the lurchers’ sofa, looking startled. Lurcher b**ch was still lying there, looking relaxed, having asserted her authority and put pup in place for trying to muscle in on her space. (This was, incidentally, the same lurcher who ‘retrieved’ the ferret a few years later.) One snap. Pip didn’t even get up to do it; just a bit of a snap in passing to put a cheeky pup in the proper place. Neither held any kind of grudge over it, though pup’s attitude was readjusted permanently. They went on to have an excellent relationship and worked together for years. Eventually the terrier was allowed onto the lurchers’ sofa. The vet needed pliers to get the needle through the pup’s scruff while stitching a six-inch gash. Respect the wolf.
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Post by runningdog on Oct 6, 2017 18:45:51 GMT -5
He’s just finding this whole thing so exhausting! This was this morning’s session. He ran around a lot, he came and ran around on me a fair bit, he finally climbed up and insisted on a power-nap draped over me like this and snoozed for five minutes or so before waking up and going off for another explore, after which he turned out two drawers, rearranged a filing cabinet and then burrowed into the folds of a clean blanket waiting to be put away. I found him a bit later, curled up in the middle, sleeping as only a ferret with a clean conscience (no nips today!) can sleep. I’m still hiding my ears and face away from his teeth in the hoodie but he actually trusts me enough to come and sleep on me, allowing me to hold him in place (he wasn’t quite far enough over to balance so he was sort of sitting in my other hand). Major result! I’m celebrating a big step forward for him. It’s surprisingly difficult to take a photo of a ferret in this position. I found it quite tricky to hold the phone at arm’s length, facing towards me, while simultanously pressing the button and not waking the baby. I mean ferret.
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Post by Sherry on Oct 7, 2017 7:33:54 GMT -5
What an interesting insight into the lives "behind the hunt", as it were.
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Post by crazylady on Oct 7, 2017 13:20:06 GMT -5
its like living a dream where dogs and ferrets take you into a fantasy world and for all its hard work you feel totally at peace just listening and watching for the thump coming from underground lol I once had an old albino ferret named nasher ( hardly had a tooth in his head lol) he would bottle brush and run down the warrens but with him we had to follow him with a locator and if he stopped mark the area with a peg he would move on and over and over he would stop we would mark then he would emerge and we knew we where in for some digging lol yes every mark when we dug down carefully we would find a tunnel and one dead rabbit lol they where never marked yet they where stone dead lol I think he must of scared them to death lol whippets are such loving soft mouthed dogs they are a dream but they do push you off the sofa if they are not going out working lol at the moment I also have a boarder terrier and a plumber terrier if only my creaking joints would give me a break I would be out laying nets in a flash lol guess I will just have to make do with knitting purse nets instead lol Bev
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Post by runningdog on Oct 8, 2017 15:33:21 GMT -5
I have a mental image of a toothless ferret ferociously gumming bunnies to death, now. Today had a little bit of backsliding as well as some good stuff - he played a lot, we had some great dooking and dancing, although he was war-dancing on the bed and fell off the side a couple of times (fortunately I’d put blankets down to soften his landing!), plus some lovely tummy-rubs and one really super pounce-on-your-hand when he giggled rather than biting when he caught me (that thing they do when they lie on their backs with their mouths slightly open, eyes screwed shut, your hand clutched in their paws and they squirm? It looks like giggling to me!) We also had a couple of ‘ooh- toes!’ moments and one ‘sorry, couldn’t resist your wrist.’ I called a halt to the session when he scaled two dog crates to steal a dog biscuit, which he carried back down again and ate somewhere under the furniture. I need to find a ferret-proof container for the dog biscuits before he comes in tomorrow; height is defence enough to keep the biscuits away from the dogs but ferrets are more determined and inventive! I was impressed by his climbing ability - he did about four foot vertically up the wire of the crates - but... honestly, dog biscuits? That’s got to count as a depraved taste in ferrets! I’m not worried about a slight slip back. There’s still a strong upward trend in his behaviour and there’s no surprise in the occasional reversion. It’s taken him years to get to where he was, we’re not going to turn that around in minutes.
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Post by LindaM on Oct 8, 2017 16:17:27 GMT -5
Hmm, dog biscuits.. I think of it in the way of how ferrets react to kibbles.. especially the worst, poorest quality kitty kibbles for example... it's ferret crack. It sounds like you are doing marvelous with him, even with some backslides, you have made very, very good progress with him already. You just keep it up, drown that fuzzy in love!
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Post by crazylady on Oct 9, 2017 13:15:55 GMT -5
keep up the good work it sounds to me like he is willing to give you a little bit trust he maybe trying to figure out if he misbehaves after he has given you some trust what will you do to him ( its hard with rescues you never know what they have been through ) you often find eventually they simply know your not out to hurt them I have had many through my hands over the years that where starved and abused once they learn that no one will hurt them and yes food will always come they turn around 100 % good luck take care bye for now Bev
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Post by runningdog on Oct 9, 2017 15:44:53 GMT -5
Angus had a great play session this morning with just two little nips. I’m going to repurpose an old snake tank to be an indoor dig-box for him. I think if I take the glass top doors off and replace with a sheet of ply with a small hole cut in it, plus give him a thick knotted rope to climb up, he’ll have a lot of fun with it. At the moment it has a load of old towels and rags dumped in it for him to roll around in, but I’ll take them out and fill it with shredded paper instead.
He went straight to where he found the dog biscuits yesterday when he came in, only to find I’d put them in a sealed tupperware tub. I had to rescue that a moment later, though, because he made an attempt to push it off the top of the dog crates. If he’d succeeded there would have been biscuits everywhere! It’s now on a shelf he can’t reach.
I’m also wondering what the best way to make him a paddling pool will be. He likes to dig his water out of the dish, and sometimes he likes to paddle and snorkel as well. His party trick is to drag the dogs’ water dish all over the kitchen floor and slosh water everywhere, which is a bit tedious for the one who has to clean up after him (me). I thought perhaps one of those paint roller trays (a nice, clean, new one, obviously!) might work as a paddling-pool for him, and I could put that inside a curver box to save the floor getting soaked. If it’s a fairly shallow box he’ll be able to get in and out as he likes, and then all I have to do is supply plenty of towels and cuddles when he’s done splashing. Angus is the only paddling ferret of my bunch, though Joker also likes to slosh the dog bowl around the kitchen.
I had to laugh first thing today - I gave them mice for breakfast and Angus was so funny with his. He was in his hammock, half-way through a morning stretch and yawn, when he saw I had a dish full of mice in my hand, so the stretch sort of collapsed into a grab and he slid backwards into his blankets with a mouse in his teeth. He came out for his second mouse a few seconds later and when I checked back after feeding the other 5, the hind ends of two mice had been placed neatly side by side in what I thought was going to be a litter tray.
(I was wrong about the litter tray, Angus has made it his food-stash-spot. As long as I know....)
The others were amusing with their mice, too. I don’t often feed commercial mice because they’re quite expensive and I wasn’t sure if the two jills knew about mice, but judging by the speed with which they grabbed a mouse each and fled, they’ve definitely had mice before. I liked the way Loony stashed his second mouse in a hammock and immediately lay on it to stop anyone stealing it. He was still there mid-morning but after lunch he and the mouse were both somewhere else.
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Post by LindaM on Oct 9, 2017 15:56:25 GMT -5
For water-play enrichment, I use a flat plastic storage container or a kiddy pool for my furkids filled low with water to splash in. I usually will surround it with laid out towels, which help catch the stray sprays of water and it allows the fuzzies to rub themselves in it after they are done. Mine also enjoy if I throw things in there to snorkel out like toys or even shrimp sometimes, they'll eat one or two or maybe just munch on a few, but they enjoy the snorkeling process more.
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Post by unclejoe on Oct 9, 2017 20:32:35 GMT -5
Go Angus! I've had to take pics in a big mirror to get both of us in...
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Post by runningdog on Oct 10, 2017 17:35:17 GMT -5
I had to answer the door in the middle of Angus’s play session this morning, so I left him upstairs in my bedroom with the door closed. I thought. I spotted something moving from the corner of my eye as I was chatting to my visitor a few minutes later and there was Angus, quietly making his way down the last couple of stairs. He was very good about being picked up and introduced to a stranger, though he really wanted to go and explore the hall.
Ferrets and stairs just seem to go together. I’ve never met a ferret who doesn’t want to go up and down stairs when they find them, they just instantly get the hang of them. None of the falling-down-stairs nonsense some puppies do.... I wonder if Angus has met stairs before or not?
He’s certainly got them pegged now, and he also knows that my bedroom door opens if a determined ferret digs hard enough for long enough around it. When I took him back upstairs, he dug the carpet right up and peeled it back from the doorway, being very determined even for a ferret!
How do you persuade a ferret to make do with just one room once they’ve discovered the rest of the house???
One of my young jills, Holly, has mislaid her nip-training somewhere. It sometimes happens when they’re about six months or so, I’ve noticed. She’ll remember in a few days, I expect. In the meantime, she’s swinging off my sleeves a lot and she has very small, very sharp teeth. This evening she decided I was an ideal adventure playground and pounced on me repeatedly. She’s also decided the velcro on their carrier handle is the best thing a ferret could possibly chew....
That means I can’t leave the carrier down for them to play in when they’re in the house. Oh well.... maybe she’ll grow out of it.
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