Dogs chewing trophies
Equipment
I have 2 huge 5 year old dogs. My life size gator mount arrives tomorrow. It will sit on the floor. Has anyone ever had an issue with dogs eating reptile mounts? Mine ate a bear rug and some antelope horns years ago when puppies. Really worried my $3k mount will get chewed on????
Can you spray some kind of watered down pepper spray on it? If it were me and my dogs I'd take a big bottle of tobasco mixed with water in a spray bottle and mist the mount. I've never met a dog that likes hot sauce.
My dogs are always "interested" in my mounts/ trophies. The only loss I have suffered was my Brittany wanted another piece of a beautiful scaled quail I had mounted. it was destroyed, broke my heart.
Scar.
No reptiles, but my husky munched the last piece of velvet off a bull euro like jerky. Was pissed at first, but now every time I look at it I laugh.
Had a dog eat 1/4 of a caribou rack and a bear vertebrae with a broadhead stuck in it.
Any chance you can elevate it? If you have the real estate a downward angled shelf would display it nicely, something like 60-70*
My gator skull arrived a few weeks ago and I caught my wirehair chewing at if within an hour...no real damage but it is now moved to a spare bedroom with my lifesize lion and few shoulder mounts and my gear where she can't get to
Get yourself a shack collar and set it, when the dog touches the gator zap him. A few times should do it.
My brothers golden retriever chewed the last 1" off all the points and the main beams of my first elk.... I was not happy to say the least!!!
They might not even enter the room with a giant lizard in it.
You might try some amonia spray or sprinkly some garlic on it.
TMBB
Just keep the dog away from it and no one gets hurt,mad or any money spent. Different room.
Attach a piece of string or something to it and hide - every time your dog gets close to it, give it a tug and let out a nasty noise - couple times like that and he should be scared to death to get near it. Oh, and set up a camera to play for our entertainment later.
Trained a few hundred hunting and companion dogs to help pay the bills years agoa and I would elevate it, crate the dogs when you are not home or school the dogs properly with an e-collar. You could "snake" train them on the gator, pretty similar expectations. But, the best solution would be to be honest about them being dogs and to them that's a huge rawhide in all reality-elevate it higher than dog level and you won't have a problem. My two-cents!
My dog is restricted area of the house so she doesn't have access to my Trophy Room.
I simply installed one of those kid stair blocking gates (6ft wide and retractable) so when the dog is allowed in the house she stays behind it.
But when the Outlaws are here my mother in law has one of those barking little lap dogs and it really likes to into my TR ~~ THAT is a problem!! With my Mnt. Lion ect----click on my 'handle' and you can see why I don't want any dogs in my TR .
Keep us updated with pics after it gets chewed up.
Older dogs don't typically chew like they did when they were pups and their teeth hurt. Like someone said put a shock collar on your dog and when he sniffs the gator give him a jolt and tell them no. My bird dog runs loose and when I first got chickens I let the chickens out with a collar on him. I had to hammer him twice. After that a chicken would walk in front of him and he would look away. Lol. 4 years and never a dead chicken and he hunts quail better than ever.
FWIW - I would be careful about spraying anything on the mount. My dog had never been a problem with regard to chewing. Ever. He was never a problem.
I had to go out of town for work and left my dog with someone. In spite of his history of not being a problem, they were concerned about leaving the dog alone for a few hours and put him in an enclosed porch. They sprayed the furniture down with bitter apple spray.
My dog was attracted to the spray for some unknown reason. He chewed the cushions that were sprayed and ate the bottle of bitter apple spray. His mouth, tongue, lips and butthole blistered up horribly. The cushions all had to be replaced and the vet bill sucked.
I had never had a problem with him before or after. I'm not convinced that sprays are a good idea. I think you'd be better training him with a collar as other guys have suggested.
If you can't train a dog from the get go to leave your stuff alone, I suggest getting a cat. Now that you have problem dogs, maybe do a nice wall mount for your gator. That would be a unique conversation piece, and great distraction from your big ole dogs chewing on your leather furniture while your guests are over for Brats and beer. Or put one of those grizzley bear electric fences around it. If you want to keep it aesthetically pleasing, rout out a groove in your hardwood floor and install Invisible Fence! They work wonders for keeping dogs within, or in your case, without, places you don't want them.
No sprays. A simple training collar will do it. I'm not talking about the professional ones. You can buy a cheap on and it'll do the job.
I'd take them one at a time to introduce them to it. Outside the room it will be in. When they sniffed it, I'd zap them. The reason for not in the trophy room is coming.
I'd then move it to the room, introduce them to it again. If they bothered with even smelling it or got close with interest, I'd zap 'me again. That ought to do it.
You want them to understand it's the gator doing it. Not the room. God Bless
Big dog I'm guessing you sit in the chair and your dogs are in your lap constantly. They could chew the heck out of the gator while he's in a different room in a matter of minutes. Shocking is a great training tool. My dog responds on the lowest setting and it doesn't take him more than twice to get the picture. Just think I don't even have to lock him in a miserable prison when I leave the house. ;)
My oldest and my dog in the yard plot.
My oldest and my dog in the yard plot.
This thread needs some pictures.
I agree link, crates should be used far and in between, not on the regular.
Ohio I don't own a crate but really don't care if others do. I just don't see the need for someone to comment on how others train their dogs. Unless your beating your dog and your wife I don't care. There is however a time to establish who the Alpha is, I'm talking dogs of course. I worked for a farmer who had a huge dog that was mostly wolf. That dog would crush armadillos in his jaws like the were dog biscuits. He would get rough after playing for a bit, when you raised your voice he'd roll over on his back. That dog could easily kill a person and he needed to know who was boss. Like I said I don't care how you train your dogs, just don't look down your nose at how I train mine.
I ALMOST NEVER CHEW ANYTHING REPTILE BUT WHEN I DO I PRETEND ITS A SNAKE.
I ALMOST NEVER CHEW ANYTHING REPTILE BUT WHEN I DO I PRETEND ITS A SNAKE.
My dogs like their crates and go into them willingly, esp at bed time. They want to go in, gives them a feeling of security. Dogs are den animals, and the crate emulates the den. Start them out young on anything and don't give them any slack because they are smart enough to know when they can get away with stuff. If you let them, they will try. Our dogs never chew on stuff they are not supposed to. They LOVE to chew sticks, balls and ropes we give them. Neither dog has ever chewed anything while left alone in the house and there is leather and antlers laying around all over. Granted, I have my gator up on the ceiling because ya just never know... Trapper did one thing as a puppy. He shredded a feather pillow I put in the kennel outside one time. But he loves birds and feathers, his vice. He hasn't done it since, and he still gets feather pillows to lay on. Smart unspoiled dogs wont chew your stuff.
Bad Lambeau
Bad Lambeau
Good Lambeau
Good Lambeau
Even smart puppies have bad days. This is Lambeau, and sometimes he can be an asshole. Was gone for an hour and had stuff in my unfinished basement so he had to be upstairs for a bit. Got home he wouldn't get within 15 feet of that couch and wouldn't look me in the eyes. Honestly believe his nail caught just perfect and opened it up, if he would've chewed it open there wouldn't be any stuffing left; just the one tear down the middle. I get the kennel argument, I just choose not to use one and this is the risk I take haha!
Before you give me grief for him not being trained enough I was hunting over him at 6 months and we killed quite a few birds in heavily pressured WI public land last year before he was even a year old. I don't bother with a leash on long runs anymore because I've spent countless hours training; blind retrieves, hand signals, dock jumping, your standard basic obedience with whistle commands; and we run 30 miles/week together. Moral of the story I wouldn't tempt him, and mine I would not consider a chewer. Not a big fan of the e-collars, I know guys have success with them, but with golden's (only breed I'll ever own) I've yet to have a reason to use the e-collar, a pat on the head or a simple no is all I need for reward/punishment.
We had an 8+ year old dog that hadn't chewed anything since he was a puppy. I leaned a oryx Euro skull leaning in the corner of our house for display (well bleached, no stink). Out of the blue after a COUPLE OF YEARS sitting there just fine, I came home to find the nasal area chewed into splinters. Thankfully nothing that enough epoxy wouldn't fix, but taught me that nothing of value like that goes on the floor.
Cayenne pepper sprinkled around it. One sniff of that and he will stay away
My dog who we raised likes her crate. Because she was raised that way. Our other rescue dog is not a crate kind of dog. It is clearly like jail for him. In my opinion, to crate a dog that wasn't raised that way is far worse than shocking them. If you don't think so, then you try and sit in your closet all day long after having never done it. You would not like it either. You can't just crate a dog and expect them to be fine with it if they weren't crate trained from the beginning.
We have four German Shepherds. The white one is still a puppy and chews everything. They are mostly outside dogs but do stay in our laundry room when it's cold or raining. We went thru a few baby gates, which are a pain to put up & take down or step over. Bought one of these gates with a hinged door & simple latch, lift and open. Best money ever spent.
Doube post. Sorry, not used to using phone.
Ghost bird has a far better compromise than a crate. Jail is still jail though and if your dog isn't used to that, there WILL be issues.
Again, this being said by a guy who has a crate trained dog. She sleeps in there when we are gone. We just leave the door open now.
I still recommend spraying the mount with a diluted pepper spray. It won't hurt the mount and will disuade the dogs.
sprinkle a little red pepper over it and that should help.
Don't trust spraying or sprinkling the mount with ANYTHING. Tried it all. It just makes for a seasoned chew toy you in my opinion. Sometimes it has the opposite effect & draws the dogs attention.
I caught my dog chewing on one of the tines of my moose rack when it was temporarily on the floor before I got it up on the wall.... luckily I caught him before he did noticeable damage..... Another dog we got destroyed a brand new couch and I refuse to replace the couch... We gave that dog to my step daughter.......
X10 LB Shooter, I would go for the Pavlov route call them over to sniff it when they do BAMMMMM zap hard will only take 3-4 zaps Much cheaper than a 3500 mount
Really good ideas guys. Keeping dogs away is not an option. I have lived here 5 years and there are 2 doors into my trophy room. There is no chance I will get in the habit of always closing both of them! It would only take once....
I could install self closing hinges on both doors but they are not 100%.
I am going to get a shock collar and light them up. I have wanted one for a while to train to not do other things - best idea yet.
Mounting it up is possible but hard. Trophy room is getting really full and one dog is 120#. I planned to leave it on floor under several other mounts - perfect spot for it - can't get it high enough. I really do not have the room!
Chemicals are also a good idea I have had them work but not 100% and in a few months it will wear off.
Thanks!
PS when my golden was a puppy she chewed up my bear rug BAD. I almost made her into a rug.
I use shock collars for training my labs (which have pretty thick skin, so to speak) and you really don't need to "light them up", the low settings have a pretty profound effect. I use the Garmin that has 3 settings; vibrate, low shock, high shock. I use vibrate 1st, followed by low shock or high shock and they learn pretty quick that if they get a vibrate, they're going to get a shock if they don't stop what they're doing. I'd say 90% of the time, I don't even use the shock function. One problem people routinely have is they don't put the collar on tight enough. You want it so you need to work a little bit to get your fingers under it. If they're too loose sometimes when you shock, there isn't any contact and the dogs don't feel it, so people think they need to increase the shock level; thick fur exacerbates this problem. This is what causes the need to really "fry them" because they only feel it sometimes. One other thing I'd do is put it on them when you're going to play fetch, or a walk or something they enjoy so it doesn't seem like a "punishing tool" to them. My dogs go crazy when I get the collars out because it means something fun is about to go down, so they really like them. I think mine were about $150 or there about and it's worked great for me (you can do multiple dogs with one remote too, but you need to be fast on those buttons and remember who is what setting). My brother bought a cheap one for his dog ($50?) and it's a complete waste of money IMO.
The best place I've found for anything dog related is gundogsupply.com.
A heavy hand can take the zip out of a dog that you can not replace in many instances.
I don't understand the whole dog thing, never have.
Don't get me wrong, my house is full of animals, but they are all dead and hanging from the wall.
It's probably just another of my many character flaws...
Bigdog I don't treat me wife and my dog the same for many reasons. One being I don't sleep with my dog. Like I said my dog responds one the lowest setting and it doesn't hurt him, at least not any more than a sticker in his paw. I don't pick his stickers but I do for my kids. The reason, people aren't dogs.
On a different note. My preachers shock collar goes to six on shock settings. His young boys play a game to see who can take the highest setting. The middle boy, age 11, has taken the full dose. I myself have also willingly been tazed. Did it hurt? Sure for a brief second and I guarantee that was a lot more voltage than my dog gets. By the way, my kids receive corporal punishment too, just as I did when I was a kid. I guess I could start making my dog sit in the corner and think about what he's done. ;)
"I don't understand the whole dog thing, never have.
Don't get me wrong, my house is full of animals, but they are all dead and hanging from the wall.
It's probably just another of my many character flaws... "
Agreed. I had dogs all my life when growing up and they all stayed outside. Dogs are cool but I sure as heck don't want one in my house.
I've never understood the reasoning behind having a dog but making it stay outside all the time. Why even have a dog then?
Cruzer I get that statement with a poodle or a Pomeranian. My dog is a tool as well as a pet. I use him to hunt dove, quail, pheasants and he would do ducks if I hunted them. I let him in when it rains and now that he's old and lean to begin with I let him sleep in the mud room when nights dip below 40 degrees. Outside he alerts me when people come down my drive or when there's a snake in the yard and he runs around with my kids. He has free run over 200 acres and will lay on the porch on watch deer in my food plot. He likes being inside when the weather is crappy but the rest of the time he enjoys running free and being a dog.
This is an interesting post, I see several people say that their dog would never.... fill in the blank. I laugh at this, I trained dogs for a long time (K-9 and general obedience) and the one rule to follow with any animal is that it's an animal, and will act as such at the most inopportune time. No training is 100% fail proof, ever. A couple of things... Crate training is a great tool and every dog should be trained to kennel. Almost every dog I have ever crate trained loved the crate and would go in it all by itself. as stated above, they are a den animal. Do you crate your dog when you travel? Doing so is safer for them and you. E-Collars are a useful tool in the hands of someone that knows how to properly condition a dog. in the hands of someone untrained, it can be an abusive and horrible weapon. All my dogs are e-collar trained and snake broke. A very low setting will work on some dogs, and some seem to have a crazy amount of tolerance to it... I call this drive! All my dogs have free access to the backyard and a portion of our house. The living room, bedroom and front entrance is by invitation only. The guestroom, guest bath and the office are off limits. A very simple dog gate works very well. I have always said that a dog will try to get away with anything that you let it. Consistency and proper training is extremely important, but so is realizing that you have an animal living in your house and periodically they will act like one:) When they do, it is up to you to correct the situation.
Good Luck brothers!
Scar.
As a kid my bedroom was a converted garage. I always had some kind of wild animal as a pet. I was keeping a hawk that had half a wing from an injury. On the wall was a mounted pheasant. One day I came home to a mess. The hawk had managed to get the pheasant off the wall. It looked very frustrated having torn the bird apart and still couldn't find any thing inside to eat.
My German Shepherds are my guard dogs and protect my home. I don't live in a neighborhood and am 100+ yards off the road. I am 100% convinced that without large outside dogs, my home would have been broken into on more than one occasion. I don't even need a doorbell. I know as soon as a vehicle turns into my gravel driveway. They do get to come inside if it's cold, raining, or very hot... or really anytime they want if we are home.
How about animatronics? Spend an extra thou or two, get it so the mouth opens and it hisses, and it's motion-detector activated. Intro the dog to it, and let the fun begin. One glimpse of the rows of pearly whites and I guarantee the dog will never go near that gator again. Added bonus - it will work great at keeping small children away from it also.
I had a really good English Pointer that would mouth birds pretty hard. I shocked him ONCE and never again did he mouth birds. He still retrieved and hunted his ass off. All I had to do from that day forward was put the collar on him. I finally didn't even turn the remote on.
OTOH, we have an inside cat, and a twin bobcat mount with flushing quail. He just would not stay off that mount ! I finally moved it to "my room" and put it atop my gun safe where it's unreachable to him.
My dogs are both guard dogs and family members at the same time. When it's warm enough, I leave my back sliding door open. That leads to my sunroom. I then leave my sliding door open that leads to my deck/backyard. Yes, completely open and unlocked house. That way when it's nice enough the dogs have full run of the house and backyard. When it's cold, they are just inside. All doors shut. Full run of the house but we close the laundry/spare and one sons bedroom door. Those doors are always closed anyway. Our dogs tend to sleep on our couch or in the crate during the day and wherever my wife is during the evening. At night, they sleep in my bed. One on the outside of me and one at my wife's feet. If it's "funky time", they just go on the floor. No prob.
Anyone that comes near my house is instantly notified that my dogs will NOT tolerate an intruder. They are especially very protective of my wife. If we wrestle, I will be bleeding because of my dogs. I prefer it that way because I tend to stay out late playing poker. My dogs are pretty much treated almost as good as my sons and I (sometimes better). They've never given me a reason to "lock them away or outside".
Scar, those are pretty good points and one that I sort of touched on. Some dogs it doesn't matter how much you turn up the collar. I had an old chocolate lab, that you could go full blast and if she was on a bird or a downed bird, you could tell it hurt when I shocked her, but she'd go through it as hard as she could. I think we only used it one day because it was obvious her drive was way more than the shock, so it was just pointless and mean. All my other dogs are pretty responsive on low levels and I started them on the e-collar much earlier, which is probably a factor too. I rarely shock when they're on birds, unless it's a safety issue such as near a highway or thin ice on ponds or something like that. We have some pointers too which have pretty thin skin and they're a lot more responsive than the labs....and if you have to scold the pointers, they hate you for a week, labs seem to be good as soon as it's over.
One of my dogs chewed the claws off of a bear rug that was hanging on the wall. She is now crated everytime we leave the house
It's really sad that some of you care more about your dead animals than your live animals. If a dog is trained correctly it can be a joy and a valuable member of the family. If you need to punish your dog because you are unable or unwilling to train it, just to display dead animals, you should rethink your priorities.
Hi Ben,
Some of my trainer friends have had some big running field trial dogs that could run through an e-collar like it wasn't even there. They usually end up taping one to it's ear and one on it's neck. That seems to solve the problem. Also, shaving the area were the collar sits is also helpful when they have full winter coats. I haven't personally done the two collar thing, but I have seen it work. As you stated, I try to never shock my dogs when they are on birds or retrieving. I had a beautiful English Pointer that was so sensitive to the collar that on the lowest setting, I couldn't even feel the shock in the palm of my hand, but she acted like her world just ended. Funny how they can react so differently. My 110lb American Bulldog is also very collar sensitive. He is a big baby and a 2 is about as high as I have to go. But my 25lb Brittany can take a 6 and not blink:)
Scar.
"I've never understood the reasoning behind having a dog but making it stay outside all the time. Why even have a dog then? "
Dogs are animals, they live outside with other animals in my world.
Besides debating the pros and cons of using mechanicals to train your dogs (LOL)...where's the gator photo?!
One dog I had years ago would have won a chewing trophy if they gave them out! Once she was around 3 she outgrew it.
