Let's learn more about the term - Prey Drive!

Have you heard of the term Prey Drive before? The theoretical definition for Prey Drive is “the instinctive inclination of a carnivore to find, pursue and capture Prey”. In layman’s term, a Labrador puppy is one of the breeds with a high prey drive. At least most of them are prey driven, which means that they need to catch hold of everything that is moving around in front of their eyes, they have to go for it and grab it right away. The chances are it could be some insect or some bug or some animal too and the puppy could eventually kill them.

From my experience with Troy, there was this one such incident which happened that could have been so fatal for him. During this season, specially when its raining quite often with a water body around, the frogs & toads are quite visible and out on the land. Troy found a frog and immediately swallowed one. Luckily, we caught him red handed and the frog literally jumped out of his mouth. The minute this happened, we saw his mouth filled with foam and panicked right away. We washed his mouth and took him to the hospital. He was doing fine afterwards.

Why did this happen? Certain Frogs and toads secrete a deadly toxin through their skin. So, if your dog licks or bites or swallows one of them. It could be fatal and they could potentially die. When this happens, ensure you get them and wash off their mouth and go see the doctor immediately even though they don’t show any symptoms right away.

I have had listened to incidents from other friends about this prey driven nature in their labs too. It could be catching hold of leaves that are moving (Fall season), chasing squirrels in the trees, chasing away birds, playing rough with tug of war toys, destroying all toys that they can. All of these are mostly signs that your puppy can be highly prey driven.

Few things that may help you for Prey Drive:

1.     First thing, do not excite your puppy to go catch the squirrel or anything that they intend to catch. Use the command, “Leave it” or “Drop it” and pull them away to distract them to do other appropriate things

2.  Seek help from a trainer if you have to. Its always wise to ask an experienced person to help you with such things so that your puppy is not continuing such behaviors forever.

3.   As much as you can, play with them with desirable toys that they are allowed to chew and keep them physically active and tire them mentally too with tricks and training.

4.   I have seen this work better with Troy, where I allow him sit outside with many distractions and make him focus on my eyes for a few seconds and reward him when he does it.

5.  Make use of the nose cap when you are out with the puppy too as they are exposed to such preys during walks.

6.  A couple of people I know, have tried training their pups with the remote collar. This could help them again to refocus his attention on you and the command you call out rather than driving himself to his prey.