What Does Prey Drive Mean In Dogs?

Dogs are fantastic animals. They make great pets, great employees, and great partners. They're great for protecting your home and farm, and they're just as great for helping you relax at the end of a long, hard day. The amount of love and joy they can bring into your life is nearly unmeasurable.

Yet one thing many people forget is that dogs are predators. They're carnivores. They want to chase down prey, kill that prey, and eat it. No one likes to think about their dog chasing down a rabbit or a squirrel and killing it, yet the simple truth is that it's an instinct all dogs have.

When people talk about a dog's "prey drive", this is what they're talking about. The desire a dog has to chase down prey and catch it. Even if you dog never chases rabbits and squirrels, you may still have seen a sign of their prey drive. Have you ever played fetch with your dog? Fetch is a game dogs enjoy because it allows them to engage in their prey drive. In this case, the prey is the ball, or the frisbee. Just like they would an animal, they chase down the item. Some dogs bring the item back, some don't, but this is still a matter of instinct and training.

Prey drive can be problematic, because you can't get rid of it. It's an instinct all dogs have. What you can do, however, is train a dog to understand there are acceptable and unacceptable actions. You need to teach your dog that no matter what their instinct is telling them, they have to listen to you. All dogs can be trained. All dogs are smart enough to understand commands when you give them.

The problem with this is that most people do not take the time to properly train their dogs. They let their dogs pull them along on the leash, or allow their dog to run off after a rabbit and do nothing but yell. This does not lead to a well trained dog. You have to actually train them, and that can be difficult. So many people have a desire to blame the dog and the dog's prey drive, but remember. The dog is an animal. They may be smart, but they do many things on instinct. It's always up to the human to do the training and to teach them what is and is not allowable.







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Does Your Dog Have Too Much Prey Drive?

Prey drive is a dog's desire to chase a moving object. Some dogs have very little and some have too much. Just to give you an idea prey drive is what we look for when we train a detection dog drug or bomb work because those dogs are actually looking for their toy.

If you have a dog that won't retrieve a ball or chase a Frisbee you have a dog that has no prey drive. On the other hand if you have a dog that keeps shoving the tennis ball into your lap or your leg and wanting you to throw it then you have a dog with too much prey drive.

Prey drive isn't something that you teach to a dog, it is something that a dog is born with, its' hereditary, it's in the genes. In fact when searching for dogs to do detection work we look at 100 dogs to find one that has that crazy wild desire to chase and retrieve a toy.

Almost all of our dogs that are trained for detection work come from shelters, rescues and sometimes owner give ups. In fact many of the dogs that we rescue for detection work are actually scheduled to be put to sleep because their drive is so high they feel that they will not make a good pet. 

Actually these dogs can make a great pet for somebody who has an active lifestyle, somebody who loves to go out into the field and throw the ball or the Frisbee. On the other hand they certainly aren't good for the couch potato type of person because this dog will drive you crazy.

So if your dog has too much prey drive what can you do to decrease it? The answer to that question is simple, nothing. That's right nothing is going to take away the dogs desire of the toy except for you throwing the ball again, and again, and again.

Over the years I've actually rescued some of these dogs from owners who just couldn't handle the dogs drives and realized that the dog would be better off being trained for detection work and being in a working home.

I've had people ask me how can we evaluate a puppy to make sure it does not have too much prey drive. There isn't really a good way to test when the dog is a puppy because most puppies do have a certain amount of prey drive. We actually never test or evaluate a dog for detection work until it's at least 12 months old. At 12 months and older you can tell what type of drive it has.

So if you have a dog with fanatical drive take advantage of that drive and get involved in some type of dog sport involving a ball or a Frisbee I think you'll find both you and your dog will enjoy it.

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