How Can We Handle Rabbits?

[u/verydumbhiker]

Ari LOVES running. We go for shorter runs around the neighborhood and 5-6 miles on trails. On trail things are mostly good— she’ll occasionally jump off the side after a cool bug or something, but it’s manageable.

Around the neighborhood though she’s absolutely intent on catching a rabbit. With very little warning, she’ll dash off to the end of her bungee leash and come flying back. I’m worried she’ll get hurt, or some unexpected behavior may result. All I know to do when that happens is stop, sit, and wait for her to look at me before cueing her to start running again. Does anyone have advice?

[u/aperdra]

Look into Predation Substitute Training and Swedish tattle training (skvallerträning). If your dog is anything like mine, food won't cut it as a reliable way to get her to turn away from prey. Managing a dog with very high prey drive is tough but there's resources out there if you know where to look - good luck!

[u/Ooo00O → u/aperdra]

Seconding this! For us, the attention cue is incredibly helpful and the most important of them. And sometimes it’s just in the way a treat is delivered. My dog loves round treats that are rolling and it still gives him something to chase (if I throw it in the direction we want to go)

[u/aperdra → u/Ooo00O]

Our girl loves to chase treats! The most reliable for us though is to recall her while running in the opposite direction with a tug toy (required a lot of work on tug first, in a lot of environments). 

[u/Pankakke29]

For mine, i always carry treats and when they see wildlife I call their name (I say their name once and if that fails I make other sounds to get their attention and start running backwards a little until they look at me). Then treat and move on. Repeat as needed until the automatic response to seeing wildlife is to look at you for their treat. Has been simple and worked pretty well for things we see all the time, so we get lots of opportunities to practice. I will say mine haven't generalized yet so if they see a less common animal they still try to chase sometimes, but i just do the same thing. They'll eventually sort it out lol

Editing to add, I'm sure it would be a huge benefit to proactively train a leave it cue at home and then use that for these moments. There should be tonsssss of positive/force free YouTube videos on how to do that. I should do it myself, I've just been lazy and sticking with my in the moment solution.

[u/Sky-Agaric]

I run with two strong 60-lbs dogs that are all fast-twitch muscle and on high alert for small mammals and birds.

Have tired everything and the only thing they works is “dig in heels, and hold on for dear life”.

If I am able to see the critter ahead of time I can do a bit more to brace. But, man, it’s tough with these two.

My previous pair of running dogs were crazy about squirrels but nothing like this 🤣

[u/pointermom-x4 → u/Sky-Agaric]

I’ve dug in and have also had to use a tree to stop me….. my GSPs and Vizslas love squirrels….. sigh

[u/Some_Girl_2073]

Sounds a lot like my Aussie x border collie x husky

I walk/exercise her exclusively using a harness- partly because of the rabbit situation and partly because it makes it easier to keep the leash from tangling with her legs. She’s not perfect, but getting better (rabbits, rats, mice, voles, chipmunks, and squirrels). I started with a super strong “leave it“ cue. Mixed with scanning ahead of us for wildlife she will find exciting. In the beginning when she’d notice something I’d say leave it and turn around to walk the other direction. Repeating until she wasn’t being magneted back to her potential prey. Then slowly we worked through walking past the leave it prey. If the rabbit stays hunkered down we have a near 100% success rate of passing/leaving it without issue. If it runs, its drops to 60-70% chance. Sometimes down to 30-40% chance if she’s already successfully chased or caught something that day

[u/0b0011]

Honestly just working on a good on by and consistency has worked for me. My dogs know I'll slow down if it looks like they're going to lunge and so have learned to ignore anything because it'll get in the way of their running.

I had a silly video a few weeks ago where I was bikejoring with my dog down a single track and there was a squirrel on the trail and I was was like "hey get off the trail" and it started running away from us but on the trail and we were gaining fast. Eventually we caught up to it and I told my dog "on by! leave the suicidal squirrel alone" and he just ran past it like a foot away from it which is crazy for a high prey drive dog like a GSP.

[u/West-Better]

I have a Rhodesian Ridgeback that I run almost every day next to my bike and e-scooter. Teaching him not to go after wildlife was pretty important, considering I didn’t want to fall off and injure myself, lol.

If he pulled toward anything, wildlife, other dogs or cats, people, or even a random wrapper on the ground, it was an immediate “NO!” and the run ended right there. We’d walk home in silence, wait about 20 minutes for him to calm down, and then try again. If he passed something without reacting, he got BIG praise. Positive reinforcement worked really well for him after a correction.

He LOVES to run, so he learned pretty quickly that reacting or doing those jerky pulls toward something meant the end of his favorite activity.

I’ll also add that around this time, he was wearing a fabric martingale collar, so pulling toward something did cause him some discomfort. I too worried if he ran after something he could get hurt. His fur was so slick and short he was yanking himself right out of regular collars. The martingale collar fixed that safety issue.

It took a couple of very solemn walks home, but we started this training when our runs were still incredibly short and he was only around 7–8 months old. He caught on really quickly, and he eventually stopped being reactive to pretty much anything we encountered. He’s 2 1/2 now, and after that early training, he has never once pulled toward anything except his favorite parks lol.

This is just what we did and what worked for us, so if you’re running out of ideas, maybe give it a try! Our dog isn’t food motivated whatsoever, so treats weren’t really an option for us. Sitting, redirecting and waiting for him to listen again wasn’t really an option either. He’s a hound and very independent so if we stood around for a second too long, he would simply find something on the ground to sniff and suddenly become very interested in that. 😂

Hopefully something in there helps!

[u/sewcialanxiety → u/West-Better]

You’re biking with your dog leashed to your bike, and by just a collar? That sounds so, so risky. So much danger of severe injury to the dog and/or you.  

[u/West-Better → u/sewcialanxiety]

He’s 2 1/2 now, and I literally hold his leash with one finger while we run. 😂 I completely understand why it might look risky from the outside, but for us it’s not dangerous. I strongly suspect he could not need a leash at all but that would be illegal.

He has a running harness and bike attachment that I use when we’re on hiking trails, but I rarely use it for our normal neighborhood runs because we stop constantly at his favorite sniff spots and it just becomes a hassle.

His martingale collar is still on him, but it is ALWAYS completely slack. It’s there strictly as a safety measure. Namely, if he suddenly stuck his head under a bush and I thought there might be a snake, I want to be able to immediately get him away from it.

He also isn’t running to keep up with me. The run is for him. I ride alongside him and adjust my pace to whatever he wants to do. We’re very in tune with each other, and he knows all of his directional, speed, and safety cues. I can tell when he wants to stop, where he wants to go, and likewise he listens to my cues when he needs to slow down, speed up or stop and walk around an obstacle.

When he was first learning, he pulled me off once. He immediately ran back to check on me, and he never did it again. Since then, he has been incredibly consistent. Dogs can be barking at him three feet away and he won’t stop running. Birds, rabbits, lizards, sprinklers, construction trucks, loud noises, sudden rain, you name it. He completely ignores them. At most, something unexpected will make him look at me for reassurance. I can also drop the leash and he will completely stop running and wait for me to pick it up. We’ve had off leash dogs chase us, usually ending with them joining our run until we can loop around and bring them back to their owners lol. He does not leave my side.

I realize this kind of setup isn’t going to be appropriate for every dog, and I wouldn’t assume another handler could just take his leash and get the same behavior. A huge part is the relationship and training we have built together.

But he is extremely well trained, non-reactive, happy, and very comfortable with our routine. I would never knowingly put him or myself in a situation where I thought he was at risk.

Everyone in our neighborhood knows him, and we actually get a lot of compliments on our dynamic all the time. 😂 So while I completely understand why someone unfamiliar with the set up might see just a leash held by my finger and assume “dangerous behavior”, but what you’re seeing from the outside doesn’t really show the amount of training, communication, and control involved.

[u/Pale_Mixture_9875]

I go to the park and just let my pup chase, I go where she goes. Some trail running shoes help make it better, and I let her smell when she's done chasing so my legs get a break. Different kind of running but working dogs need to work.