hey guys,

I don't come in here much as I don't have any dogs (wife has two cats, yuck), but a subject on another forum got me thinking about a particular event.

A friend of mine let me borrow his brown lab retreiver to do some duck hunting with and she was a fine hunting dog. Several months before I took her hunting she had had a litter of mongrels (compliments of the neighbors dog). She ended up killing all and eating a couple of the pups. It was very disturbing for the owner to say the least. I believe the owner beat the hell out of her for this but was generally good although stern with her.

She was probably 5 or 6 years old at the time and this was her first litter. She had had a lot of retreiver training early in life but was mainly a house dog (house and fenced back yard) with the chance to go in the field probably a half dozen times a year or less. She was a fatso. She had escaped the time that the breeding took place. Overall a very friendly and lazy (by choice or circumstance)dog with this one tragic event that she took part in.

Does anyone have any ideas about why this occured? Very interesting (and sad) I thought but I have no idea why it happened
Thanks

i have always been told that animals have a way of knowing when something is wrong.......

Thanks for the reply huntnma. You're probably right. As I had never even heard of this before under these circumastances especially, I was just wondering if anyon else had ever heard of this stuff. I thought perhaps it could have been b/c she was sort of older or never had pups before or ????????

thanks again

I'm not sure but have been told that it is quite common for animals
to kill their own whenever they feel threatend or someone new is around
them. The mother has to feel safe and out of everyones way. Although some just will not feed them. And it is up to the owner to make sure
that the pups are being taken care of. And try to encourage the mether
to take care of them in a kind way.

That's interesting Phil and probabaly true i'm sure. I didn't mean to imply that the guy I knew was mean to her. He was stern w/ her but didn't abuse her to my knowledge. The guy had three little boys and they sure were happy when she had the pups. I believe they tried to make her as comfortable as possible in the garage or something. The owner did probably beat her after the tragedy occured but that was probably becasue the whole family was so distressed over what happened. The incident occurred a cuple of days after they were born. Perhaps she (the dog)was just ignorant of what was going on. I dunno.

That's really sad.

Whenever I have heard of that happening, its been stress. In fact that came up at a seminar I was at several years ago. Did the puppies look healthy? Were they nursing OK? If a puppy starts crying a lot, for whatever reason, it will usually stress out the mom. That's where the owners have to be there to help. Labs are usually pretty easy welpers, but sometimes things do go wrong.

We had a litter a few years ago (we breed Cavaliers) where one of the puppies had an intestinal blockage. The more that puppy cried, the more nervous the mom got. We finally had to put the puppy down after 2 1/2 days. The mom never did settle down to normal and we still have to keep a close eye on her with every litter.

If they don't intend to breed her, maybe they should consider having her fixed to avpoid any more accidents with the neighbor.