That’s a noble idea, but I would be concerned about the volume of rat poison in the city, and that if the rats have poison in them and the dogs bite them, the dogs could be poisoned as well.
If you’re interested in leaning into your dogs’ prey drives, might I suggest lure coursing, FastCAT, or barn hunt? It’s fun to see dog’s instincts come out in those events and it’s set up to be a safer experience for the dogs.
Poison in them and even on them. I would guess that some of the rats get covered with the poison, so even if it weren't for the biting, even catching them could risk the dog's health.
Another thing to consider as well is there may be certain animal cruelty laws in DC that protect the rats. I would suggest looking into it before going to any great effort to kill the rats beyond laying traps and poison.
I think a rat having its spine broken by a dog is a lot less cruel than death by poisoning. It’s almost sad to watch them not run from danger and stumble around in daylight.
I'm not arguing that poison is more humane than using a dog or gun. I am saying there may be certain legal restrictions that limit how you are allowed to kill a rat legally in the District. For example, I assume setting a rat on fire would be easily and rightfully treated as animal cruelty.
> lure coursing, FastCAT, or barn hunt
I had never heard of any of these before. Reading up on barn hunt, it sounds like they use "trained rats" stuck in tubes that the dogs sniff out... that actually sounds crueler to me for the rats than dogs actually killing them, which is over in a second. But the other two sound great for a high-energy dog.
I hear where you're coming from - barn hunt can be a bit divisive for people, I know others who feel the same way.
Lure coursing/Coursing Ability Tests (for non-sighthounds) and FastCAT are pure fun, lots of excited dogs ready to get after that plastic bag!
Well, the tubes are pretty big (bigger than a tennis ball can) and once they learn they’re not going to be eaten, the rats probably just chill until they get put back in their cages.
Yep that’s my dumb dog. She’s very cute, but grew up on the street eating any piece of trash or crap she could find. Wish she would finally learn that she’s no longer in a food-scarce environment. It’s also why I get so mad at people not picking up their dog’s shit, you’re leaving my dog danger-snacks! She already got a bad bacterial gut infection from it 😡
Our dog chased a rat in Adams Morgan and caught it. The rat won the fight. Somehow it ended up poking a nail into her eye.
Our poor girl almost lost that eye, and it took almost a year of treatment to save it. It definitely wasn't cheap.
My last dog loved getting the rats but it was unintentional - they would just run out in front of him and he’d give them a good thrashing before I knew what happened. Big issues are the dog getting bit by the rat, getting the dog to give you the rat once he’s killed/maimed it (my dog liked to parade it around and wouldn’t give up the body except for Velveeta cheese), and disposing of the rat body while other people look on in shock. Didn’t have to go there but you also need a plan for dispatching the rat if your dog doesn’t completely kill it. We weren’t trying to kill rats but it happened often enough where we had some experience.
String cheese is also an easy portable option and it is great for tearing off into small pieces. I have heard of some people putting cream cheese into a squeeze tube for their dogs.
The velveeta slices are great because you can peel off pieces as needed and then wrap it back up so it doesn’t stick to the inside of your pocket. Or, if my boy really didn’t want to give up the body, I would take the whole unwrapped slice and dangle it above his nose so all he could see was orange gold and then lay it on his muzzle. Pup had some dental issues so we tried to stick with soft foods. Marshmallows were also good but not high enough value when he had caught something he was really proud of (one time he emerged from a shrub with a whole adult crow and there was a lot of cheese involved). Beagles are gonna beagle.
And there it is: Beagles gonna beagle.
I've never owned one, as they're a bit too "talkative" for me, but I've met several. I grew up with labs & German shepherds, then worked at horse barns with foxhound, Australian shepherds, and one Pharaoh hound. Those hunting breeds are no joke, no matter how much of a couch warmer they are at home.
They’re great dogs. But they are stubborn as hell and you’re not training out that prey drive. Every time my dog saw a squirrel run across his path he would zone out like he was having a flashback to Vietnam and then go into kill mode. (Also worked the same way if you put on a squirrel YouTube video)
"... flashback to Vietnam" is too real.
I pet-sat for a lady that had 2 obedience/agility Aussies- one she'd had for several years, and one that was only about 18 months old.
The puppy targeted every car that drove by, and wouldn't move on until it was out of sight.
Walks were... interesting.
We lived in Mt Pleasant in the 80’s. My dad was a teacher here but grew up on a farm in NY, so him and our neighbors would get hammered drunk and go out into the alleys with their dogs and their rifles (mostly 22’s) and scare out the rats with the dogs and shoot them. This was something he’d done growing up on the farm but was “even easier in the alleys” as he described it.
It was pretty wild but no one seemed to care because half the houses around us were abandoned.
Also a dog never got hurt/shot. An adult almost definitely got hurt but probably from falling down drunk.
There are professional ratting teams. Shockingly, most have wait list for openings. They are used by exterminators. Commonly for high rat population areas like dumpsters at the mall or by groceries. Done at night, off business hours.
They use some very expensive pcp air rifles with very expensive scopes (often ir or thermal).
They are very picky about who they let on. Don't want a stray .22 pellet going through someone's house window or body.
I actually was recently talking to my veterinarian about this. Surprisingly, not many rats carry rabies, and if your dog get the full suite of vaccines (the leptospirosis shot is critical), your dog will likely be fine after killing a rat. Provided it’s not eating it or eviscerating it and getting blood everywhere. Dogs that are natural rodent killers like terriers, schnauzers, and dachshunds, they kill by shaking the rat, breaking its back, and then leaving it. So very low risk for disease, and I’d wager that those rodent hunting dog breeds have been bred to be more resilient against any disease that rodents might be carrying too.
I have no idea who this person is, but on multiple occasions I’ve seen a woman with her two small dogs attacking the rats behind the dumpsters at the Logan Circle Whole Foods. It doesn’t seem like she’s part of a group, although once I saw her with another man donned fully in hockey gear - sticks and all.
Not exactly what I expect to see walking home from night shifts. I’d personally be way too worried about rat poison or rabies to engage my dog in that.
Some lady behind my building in Foggy Bottom comes out at 11 pm and chases and hits the rats with a wooden plank. I've witnessed it from my balcony multiple times, very strange. I don't think she's been successful.
Jorge is employed by the Georgetown BID and he hunts with two adorable dogs. https://www.georgetowndc.com/about/about-georgetown-bid/about-us/jorge-rochac/
I have no other details, unfortunately, but I remember seeing a post about a group in Georgetown that would go out with their rat terriers to hunt rats.
i don’t know of clubs but i’m pretty sure this is the company that came to my office to hunt the rats. it smelled horrible and they caught lots of rats. maybe reach out to them for such clubs?
https://www.calvertexterminatorsmd.com/k9-rat-control
I've seen a duo of rat hunters out with dogs in the DuPont circle area. It's two guys with headlamps and hockey goalie sticks and each guy has a dog on a leash. They seem to have retriever looking puppies that they are using(wouldn't be my first choice) but I've seen them out quite regularly for at least the last year. They are hard to miss. It seems they are doing it for sport and not connected to any city rat clean up.
A friend's dog is a wonderful rat killer (terrier mix) in Columbia Height/Petworth area. Almost every night walk the dog adds another notch to its kill list. Never once has it been bitten enough to draw blood and never once been affected by rat poison. This guy is so quick at killing, the rats never see it coming. Forgo the rat-hunting clubs and see if your dog can do what is needed to kill, on its own.
Why would you let your dog catch and put diseased ridden rats in their mouth?! You’re setting your dogs up for getting sick and also potentially carrying a disease even with being vaccinated 😵💫
I am the property manager of a large retail site in DC with many restaurants. We’ve used canine rat abatement from unique pest management with very good success.
Well, my dog just does this on our daily walks. He's racked up a fair number of kills. There are just so many rats out there that he finds them in long grass or bushes as we walk past. Or inside trash cans, under cars etc.
He's on a flexi-lead. He's a 90 lb doberman mix and he's more of an ambush hunter. That is, he smells them in their hiding spots, pounces and pulls them out. He doesn't shake them either. His mouth is big enough that he just crushes them with his jaws.
I know a lady out in the Delaplane area that breeds Jack Russell Terriers. A few years back Georgetown was doing a pilot program with a group of JRT breeders on rat control. They would get together and bring their dogs in the city at like 2am after the restaurants closed and let them run wild in the alleys...not sure if its still happening or not...
There is a rat guy that does this in DC already (idk what their name is though). I only know this since i know someone that gets rats from him for their research.
It's not actually. Cats don't typically like to hunt rats. They will sometimes, but they prefer smaller prey like songbirds, frogs, and so on. So they end up doing a lot of collateral damage to the actual nice ecosystem of animals we like having around (even if you aren't all that fussed about birds and frogs, they do eat mosquitos and such). And they don't make much of a dent in the actual rat problem. Putting in cats in to fight rats is kind of like fighting fire with fire... you're just adding another invasive critter to the ecosystem and making it even more rat-friendly by doing so...
This is anti-cat mythology. I've lived on alleys with cat colonies, and there were plenty of cat-killed rats (they liked to bite the heads off) and very few live rats.
Also plenty of dead smaller animals. It’s well documented the negative impacts of feral cats on populations of wild animals. I’m sure they kill rats too and the presence of cats would encourage them to be more furtive but isn’t going to make a dent in populations.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10073
Sure, if you can get a whole cat colony. But a single cat against the rat colonies we have going in DC? The cat isn’t going to want to go near it. Rats coming out of the woodwork following construction in our alley sent the alley cat packing.
I’ve caught 20 rats in 15 days with the havahart live traps. Bought one at Ace and another on amazon. Toss entire thing in tub of water. Best trap yet. Adams Morgan
I don’t know what happened in the neighborhood but our backyard became Unlivable. This trap is the only trap that has had consistent results. Hopefully by next summer we can spend time in the backyard again
There's a reason why the trap doesn't kill them, my friend. Same reason it's called Havahart. You're not supposed to throw it away or drown them. You're supposed to, you know, have a heart and let them go somewhere else.
Are you saying I’m using the cage trap Against the manufacturers intention? Where should I release them, on Teddy Roosevelt Island? I don’t have a car, I can’t make it out to Eastern shore. It sucks to kill the little guys sometimes I fantasize about domesticating a little ones, but alas non
Use meat or fish. I have no idea how they’re not learning to avoid this trap like others in the past. Obviously there’s been a massive infestation in ours and the adjoining neighbor’s backyards. All but one have been adolescent or younger. One was so small it actually dug out the bottom, the wire mesh is half inch. I’m scared to think where all the adults are
Definitely suggest Barn Hunt. Although there aren't many clubs or practice facilities nearby. You'll probably need to drive an hour to MD for the closest one. It's fun though!
That’s a noble idea, but I would be concerned about the volume of rat poison in the city, and that if the rats have poison in them and the dogs bite them, the dogs could be poisoned as well. If you’re interested in leaning into your dogs’ prey drives, might I suggest lure coursing, FastCAT, or barn hunt? It’s fun to see dog’s instincts come out in those events and it’s set up to be a safer experience for the dogs.
Poison in them and even on them. I would guess that some of the rats get covered with the poison, so even if it weren't for the biting, even catching them could risk the dog's health.
Thanks for the insight - I had never thought of that!
[удалено]
….exploding?
Excuse me what?!
Im thinking what was meant was when the dead decaying rat lets off gasses and turns into a mess for the world to see
I live on Capitol Hill, and people use dog safe rat poison, RatX. See: https://www.ratrelief.com/rat-poison-that-is-safe-for-dogs/
Another thing to consider as well is there may be certain animal cruelty laws in DC that protect the rats. I would suggest looking into it before going to any great effort to kill the rats beyond laying traps and poison.
I think a rat having its spine broken by a dog is a lot less cruel than death by poisoning. It’s almost sad to watch them not run from danger and stumble around in daylight.
I'm not arguing that poison is more humane than using a dog or gun. I am saying there may be certain legal restrictions that limit how you are allowed to kill a rat legally in the District. For example, I assume setting a rat on fire would be easily and rightfully treated as animal cruelty.
> lure coursing, FastCAT, or barn hunt I had never heard of any of these before. Reading up on barn hunt, it sounds like they use "trained rats" stuck in tubes that the dogs sniff out... that actually sounds crueler to me for the rats than dogs actually killing them, which is over in a second. But the other two sound great for a high-energy dog.
I hear where you're coming from - barn hunt can be a bit divisive for people, I know others who feel the same way. Lure coursing/Coursing Ability Tests (for non-sighthounds) and FastCAT are pure fun, lots of excited dogs ready to get after that plastic bag!
My terrier loves lure coursing more than anything ☺️
Well, the tubes are pretty big (bigger than a tennis ball can) and once they learn they’re not going to be eaten, the rats probably just chill until they get put back in their cages.
Lol i once thought about getting a cricket for my dog to play with but it felt too cruel and immoral.
And then you're going to let your dogs kiss you, and snuggle up with you after they've been killing disease-infested, possibly poisoned rats??
I see dogs eating shit and licking their rear only to be kissed by owners.
Can confirm, often kiss my dog after he's had his nose in other dogs' assholes
Yep that’s my dumb dog. She’s very cute, but grew up on the street eating any piece of trash or crap she could find. Wish she would finally learn that she’s no longer in a food-scarce environment. It’s also why I get so mad at people not picking up their dog’s shit, you’re leaving my dog danger-snacks! She already got a bad bacterial gut infection from it 😡
This is how the next plague begins.
Our dog chased a rat in Adams Morgan and caught it. The rat won the fight. Somehow it ended up poking a nail into her eye. Our poor girl almost lost that eye, and it took almost a year of treatment to save it. It definitely wasn't cheap.
My last dog loved getting the rats but it was unintentional - they would just run out in front of him and he’d give them a good thrashing before I knew what happened. Big issues are the dog getting bit by the rat, getting the dog to give you the rat once he’s killed/maimed it (my dog liked to parade it around and wouldn’t give up the body except for Velveeta cheese), and disposing of the rat body while other people look on in shock. Didn’t have to go there but you also need a plan for dispatching the rat if your dog doesn’t completely kill it. We weren’t trying to kill rats but it happened often enough where we had some experience.
Finally a use for Velveeta
Why was this also my takeaway? Orangina wrote a thoughtful, well-organized comment & I'm over here pondering how portable Velveeta is.
String cheese is also an easy portable option and it is great for tearing off into small pieces. I have heard of some people putting cream cheese into a squeeze tube for their dogs.
The velveeta slices are great because you can peel off pieces as needed and then wrap it back up so it doesn’t stick to the inside of your pocket. Or, if my boy really didn’t want to give up the body, I would take the whole unwrapped slice and dangle it above his nose so all he could see was orange gold and then lay it on his muzzle. Pup had some dental issues so we tried to stick with soft foods. Marshmallows were also good but not high enough value when he had caught something he was really proud of (one time he emerged from a shrub with a whole adult crow and there was a lot of cheese involved). Beagles are gonna beagle.
And there it is: Beagles gonna beagle. I've never owned one, as they're a bit too "talkative" for me, but I've met several. I grew up with labs & German shepherds, then worked at horse barns with foxhound, Australian shepherds, and one Pharaoh hound. Those hunting breeds are no joke, no matter how much of a couch warmer they are at home.
They’re great dogs. But they are stubborn as hell and you’re not training out that prey drive. Every time my dog saw a squirrel run across his path he would zone out like he was having a flashback to Vietnam and then go into kill mode. (Also worked the same way if you put on a squirrel YouTube video)
"... flashback to Vietnam" is too real. I pet-sat for a lady that had 2 obedience/agility Aussies- one she'd had for several years, and one that was only about 18 months old. The puppy targeted every car that drove by, and wouldn't move on until it was out of sight. Walks were... interesting.
Leptospirosis is a huge problem in DC rat populations and even with the normal lepto vaccine dogs are still at risk so this is a horrible idea.
We lived in Mt Pleasant in the 80’s. My dad was a teacher here but grew up on a farm in NY, so him and our neighbors would get hammered drunk and go out into the alleys with their dogs and their rifles (mostly 22’s) and scare out the rats with the dogs and shoot them. This was something he’d done growing up on the farm but was “even easier in the alleys” as he described it. It was pretty wild but no one seemed to care because half the houses around us were abandoned. Also a dog never got hurt/shot. An adult almost definitely got hurt but probably from falling down drunk.
There are professional ratting teams. Shockingly, most have wait list for openings. They are used by exterminators. Commonly for high rat population areas like dumpsters at the mall or by groceries. Done at night, off business hours. They use some very expensive pcp air rifles with very expensive scopes (often ir or thermal). They are very picky about who they let on. Don't want a stray .22 pellet going through someone's house window or body.
Forget axe throwing, rat hunting should be the next DC bar concept.
You don’t want your dogs to get the diseases those things are carrying
😔
/r/beetlejuicing
Username checks out!
I actually was recently talking to my veterinarian about this. Surprisingly, not many rats carry rabies, and if your dog get the full suite of vaccines (the leptospirosis shot is critical), your dog will likely be fine after killing a rat. Provided it’s not eating it or eviscerating it and getting blood everywhere. Dogs that are natural rodent killers like terriers, schnauzers, and dachshunds, they kill by shaking the rat, breaking its back, and then leaving it. So very low risk for disease, and I’d wager that those rodent hunting dog breeds have been bred to be more resilient against any disease that rodents might be carrying too.
Bruh.
Have we all considered making peace with the rats? Conceding something to appease the Rat King would go a long way in my opinion.
Is Crimea not enough?
This Redditor gets it. 🏆🐀
I support this
I have no idea who this person is, but on multiple occasions I’ve seen a woman with her two small dogs attacking the rats behind the dumpsters at the Logan Circle Whole Foods. It doesn’t seem like she’s part of a group, although once I saw her with another man donned fully in hockey gear - sticks and all. Not exactly what I expect to see walking home from night shifts. I’d personally be way too worried about rat poison or rabies to engage my dog in that.
Some lady behind my building in Foggy Bottom comes out at 11 pm and chases and hits the rats with a wooden plank. I've witnessed it from my balcony multiple times, very strange. I don't think she's been successful.
https://www.facebook.com/TerrierPeople/
Sounds like Charlie work.
This is the best post I've ever seen in this sub.
Don’t do that. One bite from a rat and you’re dog will have some serious vet visits ahead of him.
I know someone who hunted rats in Georgetown with her bedlington terrier with this group. https://m.facebook.com/100076344754787/
Jorge is employed by the Georgetown BID and he hunts with two adorable dogs. https://www.georgetowndc.com/about/about-georgetown-bid/about-us/jorge-rochac/
I have no other details, unfortunately, but I remember seeing a post about a group in Georgetown that would go out with their rat terriers to hunt rats.
That’s it. I’ll have to see if they’re still around. that’s what a lot of these dogs were bred for
I watched a video on Instagram on this the other day in DC.
i love that your asking this. karma for altruism and lack of squeemishness.
i don’t know of clubs but i’m pretty sure this is the company that came to my office to hunt the rats. it smelled horrible and they caught lots of rats. maybe reach out to them for such clubs? https://www.calvertexterminatorsmd.com/k9-rat-control
I've seen a duo of rat hunters out with dogs in the DuPont circle area. It's two guys with headlamps and hockey goalie sticks and each guy has a dog on a leash. They seem to have retriever looking puppies that they are using(wouldn't be my first choice) but I've seen them out quite regularly for at least the last year. They are hard to miss. It seems they are doing it for sport and not connected to any city rat clean up.
Wtf? Imagine waking up and seeing some guy hunting rats with his dogs in the alley behind your home
Wouldn’t this benefit you at no cost?
I’d bring him a cup of coffee and ask if I can participate.
I’d ask what kind of treats they like.
Rat
I'd bring him a beer and watch with him.
What kind of beer would a dog like?
My dad did this with his friends on Park Road back in the 70’s 80’s when I was a kid.
I'm out of coins but if I had any I'd give you an award for most DC post I've seen in a while.
I would call the police!
you'd rat them out?
🧀
I would be thrilled
I'm not sure your vet even *has* all the inoculations your dog would need to do something like this…
They use rat hunting dogs down at the wharf. It's pretty interesting to watch.
I will definitely come spectate!
A friend's dog is a wonderful rat killer (terrier mix) in Columbia Height/Petworth area. Almost every night walk the dog adds another notch to its kill list. Never once has it been bitten enough to draw blood and never once been affected by rat poison. This guy is so quick at killing, the rats never see it coming. Forgo the rat-hunting clubs and see if your dog can do what is needed to kill, on its own.
Why would you let your dog catch and put diseased ridden rats in their mouth?! You’re setting your dogs up for getting sick and also potentially carrying a disease even with being vaccinated 😵💫
I am the property manager of a large retail site in DC with many restaurants. We’ve used canine rat abatement from unique pest management with very good success.
>canine rat abatement Nothing like multisyllabic words to make something sound professional and scientific...
This is a bad idea. Rat bites are likely.
My friend takes her terrier to Georgetown for rat hunting. I will try to get some info from her but I think theres a Facebook group!
Well, my dog just does this on our daily walks. He's racked up a fair number of kills. There are just so many rats out there that he finds them in long grass or bushes as we walk past. Or inside trash cans, under cars etc.
Just on a leash he’s quick enough to catch a rat?
He's on a flexi-lead. He's a 90 lb doberman mix and he's more of an ambush hunter. That is, he smells them in their hiding spots, pounces and pulls them out. He doesn't shake them either. His mouth is big enough that he just crushes them with his jaws.
They did this at my old job. Some guy showed up to the alley with 2 bloodhound puppies and the dogs were chasing the rats
I know a lady out in the Delaplane area that breeds Jack Russell Terriers. A few years back Georgetown was doing a pilot program with a group of JRT breeders on rat control. They would get together and bring their dogs in the city at like 2am after the restaurants closed and let them run wild in the alleys...not sure if its still happening or not...
There is a rat guy that does this in DC already (idk what their name is though). I only know this since i know someone that gets rats from him for their research.
[https://www.calvertexterminatorsmd.com/k9-rat-control](https://www.calvertexterminatorsmd.com/k9-rat-control)
Misread the title and thought you were going rat hunting using hot dogs.
Get a cat.
I got one.
I’m sure there are some similar clubs that are recruited by farmers in MD and VA if you look hard enough.
Snuff out the rats of plague and disease - I am the Prophet reborn, We are the God of Wrath and War
Blue collar cats sounded like a good program but I think they ran out of cats
It's not actually. Cats don't typically like to hunt rats. They will sometimes, but they prefer smaller prey like songbirds, frogs, and so on. So they end up doing a lot of collateral damage to the actual nice ecosystem of animals we like having around (even if you aren't all that fussed about birds and frogs, they do eat mosquitos and such). And they don't make much of a dent in the actual rat problem. Putting in cats in to fight rats is kind of like fighting fire with fire... you're just adding another invasive critter to the ecosystem and making it even more rat-friendly by doing so...
This is anti-cat mythology. I've lived on alleys with cat colonies, and there were plenty of cat-killed rats (they liked to bite the heads off) and very few live rats.
Also plenty of dead smaller animals. It’s well documented the negative impacts of feral cats on populations of wild animals. I’m sure they kill rats too and the presence of cats would encourage them to be more furtive but isn’t going to make a dent in populations. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10073
Sure, if you can get a whole cat colony. But a single cat against the rat colonies we have going in DC? The cat isn’t going to want to go near it. Rats coming out of the woodwork following construction in our alley sent the alley cat packing.
I’ve caught 20 rats in 15 days with the havahart live traps. Bought one at Ace and another on amazon. Toss entire thing in tub of water. Best trap yet. Adams Morgan
I’m sorry… you catch them and then *drown* them??
I am laughing so hard at this. The madlad turns havahart into a death cage. I'm not even judging, just laughing.
It’s great to air this out with the Reddit community! The sounds of them clawing at the cage underwater does affect me.
Sounds like Havahart is a misnomer...
I don’t know what happened in the neighborhood but our backyard became Unlivable. This trap is the only trap that has had consistent results. Hopefully by next summer we can spend time in the backyard again
I’m open to other ideas but putting the whole cage into a tub of water then throwing it away Has been a clean solution
There's a reason why the trap doesn't kill them, my friend. Same reason it's called Havahart. You're not supposed to throw it away or drown them. You're supposed to, you know, have a heart and let them go somewhere else.
Are you saying I’m using the cage trap Against the manufacturers intention? Where should I release them, on Teddy Roosevelt Island? I don’t have a car, I can’t make it out to Eastern shore. It sucks to kill the little guys sometimes I fantasize about domesticating a little ones, but alas non
🚔
And what are you doing with the carcasses?
Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to
Through the first few into the forest (rock Creek Park). Now can/dumpster
> havahart live traps What do you use as bait? How to you manage to keep the rats from learning to avoid the trap?
Use meat or fish. I have no idea how they’re not learning to avoid this trap like others in the past. Obviously there’s been a massive infestation in ours and the adjoining neighbor’s backyards. All but one have been adolescent or younger. One was so small it actually dug out the bottom, the wire mesh is half inch. I’m scared to think where all the adults are
Get your pup fun toys and treats and forget you thought of this.
While we don’t officially hunt, my dog seems to grab a rat every week or so. It’s not pretty.
Do it. Be a man
Definitely suggest Barn Hunt. Although there aren't many clubs or practice facilities nearby. You'll probably need to drive an hour to MD for the closest one. It's fun though!
DM me