Dogs Who Kill

A reader writes:

If it makes you feel better:

We have two beautiful husky mixes adopted from a rescue.  Like all huskies, they have a prey instinct that can never be fully trained out. We thought we'd done pretty well...until the day I arrived home from a walk and they brutally put down a feral cat that had been hiding under my car.  In our suburban driveway.  In the middle of the day.  With the neighbors standing about 10 feet away.

I was shocked/embarrassed.  The dogs were elated for the rest of the day ("PLEASE, one more walk?  PLEASE").

How I got over it:  When reciting the story to a friend of ours, he shared that, while growing up in Canada, his husky had the same problem.  But his husky kept taking down deer.

Another warns:

Unfortunately, the bloodletting could get worse with Dusty.  Every dog is different and I believe breeds matter, but there is an old-saying from here in the South that proves accurate more often than not:  Once a dog sucks eggs... Basically, once they taste blood, they'll always go after it.

We have two Jack Russells

and I watched one almost swim himself to the point of drowning to kill a Black Swan at my parents house.  We thought letting them run free in the country would be safe (in spite of the rare squirrel carcass that would show up in the backyard).  Unfortunately, the country just turned out to be a target-rich environment.  By the time I got the canoe out into the water and was able to get to him, the swan was history.  When I dragged Max out of the water, he had a glazed look in his eyes like he couldn't even see me.  Perhaps the canine-equivalent to the "thousand-yard stare."  The funny thing is, if the Max is leashed, Oscar actually plays with all other creatures.  It's like Max is a cult-leader.

The entire escapade left us scared to ever let him loose and answered a long-time question I had posed to my step-father:  What kind of fool pays $500 for a black swan?  The kind with a blood-thirsty Jack Russell.