Re: Dog rips hay bales apart

Watch out for your barn cats shitting on the hay, It can cause a
bacterial deisease that can make cattle and sheep very sick, I dont
know about horses, but I imagine they can get sick from it as well.



Jack


On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 12:54:24 GMT, Ann <nntpmail@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 03:48:18 -0600, maradcliff wrote:

I have horses and several barn cats. I have never been a real dog
lover, but someone dropped off a dog by the local small animal vets
house, who happens to be my neighbor. He knows I take in lots of
strays, so he called me. I found the dog was fine around his horses
and cats, and seemed to like people, so I brought her home. She's an
older female, mid sized dog of (you guess) breed. She has only been
here about 5 days now, but is pretty well behaved, except for one
thing. I have quite a few horses to feed, and feed 8 to 11 hay bales
to these horses every day. They are spaced far apart, because I have
mares on one side of the farm, stallions on the other, ponies near the
house, and a few other locations. So, my daily feed procedure is to
take the pickup, load on my bales and drive around and toss them off
where needed. Then I go around on foot and actually feed them, check
the horses and their water, etc. Well, this dog goes around and rips
the bales apart, leaving a huge mess of hay scatterred in a 10 foot
area with the twines lost somewhere in the mess. Needless to say, I
am NOT pleased. Yesterday she riped up 3 bales in about 20 minutes,
so by the time I was finished feeding the ponies, I had a big mess by
the mares.

She got a good earful from me, but a 10 minutes later she was starting
on another bale. That's when she got tied to a tree until I finished
feeding.

I can probably answer any question about horses and even cats, but I
am very inexperienced with dogs. I dont believe in hitting any
animal, although getting some rolled up newspaper, or a horse buggy
whip did come to mind.

Maybe someone on here can give me some advice how to correct this dogs
behavior with the hay. I really do not understand why she does that
either. Has anyone else ever had this problem?

Yes, I can tie her everytime I do chores, but I'd like to just teach
her to stop doing it. BUT HOW ????

One other thing, she seems to have an obcession of eating whole corn.
I had a bag of corn (for the horses) in my feed room, and she knocked
over the bag and was eating the corn (after she was fed dog food).
What's the deal with that? I'm starting to think this dog wants to be
a horse.

Sounds like an animal that's used to having to scavenge for food. Also,
could she be pregnant? Agreed that hitting her is not going to have a
positive effect; she's in a new situation and hasn't learned the rules
yet. She may have been mistreated before and imo continuing that would
reinforce the survival instinct.

Some people who do have dogs will probably have some practical advice on
how to train her not to do this. Imo, it will come down to time for her
to learn that she will be adequately fed by you ... and temporarily
keeping her confined and/or on a leash until she learns the "rules".

How fortunate you are to have a vet living next door!



.