Prey drive | Dogs

Whether you realize it or not, your dog playing with a squeaker toy could be them expressing prey drive. The same goes for them chasing a ball or fetching a stick. When a dog is staring down a squirrel or sniffing along the path where a cat has just been, that is many generations of carnivorous predatory behavior at work.
Prey drive is what motivates carnivores to continue to hunt for their next meal. While pet dogs rarely need to hunt for food, the silent staring, the stalking, the chasing, and the biting (whether to grab or kill) are all part of the prey drive. The prey is usually a small animal, such as a cat, frog, squirrel or bird, but some dogs will hunt deer or even other dogs.
Sometimes these normal prey drive instincts cross into behavior that is not appropriate for modern dog life. When your dog is chasing cats, deer, squirrels, or other small dogs, their strong sense of prey drive poses safety concerns. People, pets, and wildlife can be in danger if a dog’s prey drive escalates and causes them to bite or attack. The good news is, prey drive is quite manageable through safety precautions and training.

What causes prey drive?

Some dogs are more prone to stubborn and intense prey drive, but it’s logical. For example, Border Collies were bred to have a strong drive to spot, stalk, and chase sheep but stop before they bite. On the other hand, Terriers were bred to chase and kill rodents. Greyhounds, Pit Bulls, Hounds, and Retrievers have all been bred and trained to strengthen their prey drive over many generations to help people with various tasks and activities, such as hunting.

A high level of prey drive can be hard for the average pet parent to manage, but a dog with high prey drive may be well suited as a working dog.

Does prey drive mean my dog is aggressive?

Prey drive is not the same as aggression. While a dog with strong prey drive may also have aggressive behaviors, dogs with high prey drive are not necessarily aggressive. Aggressive behavior is when a dog acts violently due to emotion, such as fear or protectiveness. A dog guarding his food from the cat is acting aggressively. A dog chasing the cat to bite or kill it is displaying prey drive.

Normally, an aggressive dog is trying to get away from the thing that is causing the negative emotion or may try to scare it off by barking or growling. Prey drive is causing a dog to head towards their prey.

Is prey drive dangerous?

Dogs with low prey drive normally don’t pose a risk to those around them, but if you see signs of prey drive (stalking, chasing, or biting other animals) you should use extra caution. Consult with a positive reinforcement trainer to discuss training methods to help your dog moderate their prey drive. If your dog has shown any indication that they may bite, they should be muzzled when around other animals and never permitted to run off-leash. Be especially careful around small children in the home and outside on bikes or skateboards as they can be quite triggering for dogs with prey drive.

Nearly all dogs show some signs of prey drive and normally can satisfy their urges with a game of fetch or tug of war. However, if your dog is showing intense prey drive, it’s time to talk to a professional about remedying this potentially dangerous behavior.

How to build the forever dog | Forever dog training Part III

 

On one side, the dogs ate the traditional diet of kibble the dry food in the bowl. Here's what's really cool. On the other side, they replicated that same bowl, but they just didn't cook it. It's the same bowl and cooked with fresh vegetables and fresh meat. And so what kind of impact would that have on animals under a microscope, the results were unbelievable. The animals that ate the bowl uncooked, not only had a better microbiome, but a more diverse microbiome. So when I traveled to the university in London King's College, Dr. Tim Spector, one of the most cited scientists in the entire world microbiologist, he told me, my friend, the more diverse that your dog and cat's bellies are, the longer they'll live. And if there's ever a time to add a little bit of fresh food at the good Lord put on this planet for all of us to share, share with your pets. Okay, the last tip of the day for you guys, what would it be? environmental factors. Now, this is a tough category to cover. This could be toxins, lawn pesticides, floor cleaners, candles. I wanted to pick one easy that you could all do. And what was that? exercise? It's an environmental factor. Some of you say, what's the big deal? If we took two of some of the oldest living dogs in the world, the 31 year old dog Maggie who just passed away a couple years ago God loved her and the 25 year old v talk named Bramble. What did these two dogs have in common? You see, if you asked an heritage brambles mother, she taught said the one thing that she did that was critical was exercise. Well, I like to walk my dogs 20 minutes around the neighborhood. That's a joke. She gave her dog two hours of exercise every single day plus women. My 20 minute walk is a joke. And she says even crazier. When they asked Brian McLaren, the man who put together the oldest dog in the world, and they said to him, Brian, how much exercise Did you give your animal? I remember exercise, lowers stress, lowers blood sugars, lowers insulin. It's the cheapest form of therapy today. Ryan McLean said, Well, I didn't really exercise my dog. You see, I would drive my tractor my dog would follow me from one end of the farm, it was only 10 kilometers, and then I would drive all the way back to the other side of the farm. It was only 10 kilometers, maybe about 20 kilometers a day, every single day.

Exercise is critical. Here's the thing. We need more tiggers on this planet. This list that I share with you, my friends, is not for those people who say

How to build the forever dog | Forever dog training Part II

 The second tip we were talking about, and this one is really important. caloric restriction. If you talk to the top scientists in the world, you said How did we go from 11.3 years all the way to 10? How did we do that? Scientists will tell you it's caloric restriction. That's the problem. Why? If we were to look at the pet obesity statistics worldwide right now, let's take the top eight countries in the world, my friends, we are seeing a huge increase in pet obesity. If you were to average all the major countries around the world, over 51% of animals, dogs and cats are overweight or obese today. That's a huge problem. So what can we do? In the first study of its kind, scientists wanted to know what would happen if they took two groups of dogs. One group is the way that we all feed our dogs. Just put food in the bowl he'll eat when he wants to eat. And then the other group, let's just take 25% out of the bowl. What did that do to the overall longevity of the animal 35%. After the lifetime study from birth to death, the scientists found that just by reducing food by 25%, you could increase the lifespan of your animal by two extra years. Remember, longevity experts say that animals age seven times faster do the math. So it's hugely important that we don't feed our animals out of love, because we can shorten their lifespans dramatically. Food should nourish you, but it shouldn't hurt you. Okay, the third tip that I could give you today is insulin signaling. This one's tough. I had a hard time with a lot of scientists with this one. But here's what we know. Eat a lot of sugar, eat a lot of starch, your blood sugars are going to go up. And when your blood sugar goes up, your body does something and releases something called insulin. Now here's what we know today in science, you release a lot of insulin can be toxic, too much insulin When can be inflammatory. Too much insulin can aid you and can sell replicate. Now he just mentioned to you that eating a lot of sugars and starches, what's the big deal? You can't make pet food, kibble. Without getting the stick try to make a cookie without starch can't do it. So the pet food manufacturer has to add starch to the food. The problem, pet owners have no idea how much is in it. These starches, aka carbohydrates are major macronutrients. 

So if the pet owner looks up and down on a bag of food, he's not going to see it. The pet food manufacturer will tell you how much fats in there, that's a macronutrient. They'll tell you how much protein is in there. That's a macronutrient. But what about the macronutrient that can fuel your animal you should know about that. The entire bowl over 50% of the bowl is a macronutrient that feeds your animal and that's carbohydrates. And let me tell you consuming that many carbo hydrates, according to science can aid your pet dramatically. Now there's an equation that the pet food manufacturers will tell Hey, it's online, you just go in there do the math yourself. Who on earth does that? Here's the thing. I sat down with Dr. Richard Patton. 40 year nutritionist, the man who helped formulate all of these foods. And I asked them Dr. Patton, how much starch is too much starch. And he said to me, right, if you go back in time, before the pet food revolution of 100 years ago, dogs ate meat, seeds, nuts, berries, you name it, add it all up is 4% carbohydrates. Today's dog and cat is consuming anywhere between 50 to 70% carbohydrates. And unless you're testing your dog's blood sugars every single day, my friends, unless you're picking your animals, and you're taking them into your veterinarian, you're testing their insulin levels. You could be agent and very quickly. So it's very important as pet parents around the world, we learn how much starches are in our foods. The fourth tip is repair of damage. Now this one's big. If you damage your cells, you have to fix yourselves. And how do you do that? Talk to any health expert in the world. And they'll tell you that your entire immune system is your gut. And when you have a healthy immune system, you're going to repair cells, whether you're human whether you're a dog or whether you're a cat. But what helps a healthy immune system. I traveled all the way to Idina, the University of Utah and a very tough one for being Italian word where these scientists were doing something unbelievable. To scientists Dr. Lisa sandry. And Dr. Bruno Stephen on. And these scientists wanted to know if feeding dogs a certain type of food would help their microbiome make their immune system healthier. So we went through a lot of crap. But not literally like a lot of poop. Analyzing the microbiome of animals, the bacteria that's inside the poop. And what they found was fascinating. What these scientists did was they took two panels of dogs.