Golden Retriever + Ducklings?

[iboughtaduck]

I have an eight year old (come August, around the time my new pekins will be maturing) Golden who is very curious about the new guests in the house. I've introduced her to the trio, all turning a week old tomorrow, and she seems rather curious, but her doggy expressions are a little hard to determine. I can't honestly tell if she's interested in the ducks in a friendly fashion or a fresh meat kind of way.

I've read that with dogs and ducks it's less nature and more nurture, but until now the question of training her to be duck friendly hasn't arisen (they're my first ducks). So.... is it too late? Can I not teach a dog new tricks, as the saying goes?

But I must note that while she hasn't been trained to not hunt, she hasn't been influenced to hunt them either.

Perhaps there's a way to allow her to get accustomed to the ducks?

 

[EJPedrazzi]

Hi there! We have a Shepherd / Pyrenees mix and he seems to love the ducklings, in friendly way. They'll climb all over him or peck his nose and he runs off! When I introduced him to the ducklings I told him 'gentle' and 'leave it' which are two command words he already knows. Gentle means when you're playing for him to be gentler, and leave it is pretty straight forward. He's about a year and a half now and he does listen to what I say so I think he understands that they're a part of the family, not something to be destroyed. I don't know how well your dog is trained, only your gut instinct will tell but I hope she gets along with them!

 

[iboughtaduck]

She's never seen ducks before and she listens to her humans very well. I think I'll give it a shot, seeing as how 'gentle' and 'leave it' 'stop' and the like are parts of her vocabulary.

 

[EJPedrazzi]

Good luck! Obviously just watch her closely for the first few times and hopefully she'll learn to protect and love them too!

 

[ducklover87]

I'm sure she would be fine. My chocolate lab loves my ducks. I call him mother hen sometimes lol. I introduced him to ducks last year and I did it by holding one in my hand and letting him sniff it. He listens very well so when he would go to lick it I would tell him easy they are babies. He knows easy and babies so it worked out good and eventually he caught on.

Here's a picture of our new ducklings that he has become the mother hen of. As you can tell from his face he is very interested in "his babies"

 

[Miss Lydia]

Please don't ever let your guard down for a second, beleive me I know, our 3yr old mini dachshund killed one of our ducklings last summer and he has been raised around ducks/geese and chickens since 6 weeks old. I think the prey drive got the better of him, all it takes is a second, ask the person who posted last week about their dog killing one of their ducklings. I'm not saying you don't introduce you just do it in a way that the dog cannot get his mouth on the duckling.

 

[Diamond88]

The first time my parents' golden retriever saw my duck, he was a maniac and definitely wanted to chomp on her--not so much to eat her, but just to play. It would've been a dream come true for him to play "gimme that duckling" with us! But after a few months of slow, supervised interaction, he got used to her and pretty much lost interest. He'd follow her around sniffing her for a few minutes and then just walk away.









Here's a video of them both in the tub:

 

[bigtrout]

Depends on the dog...my mini daschund would love to eat a duck...she still sneaks up on them til my pekin boys chase her off and its been 3 years around the ducks. Shed never kill a duck but I'd never let her unsupervised near anything less than an adult duck.

My weimeraners on the other hand....born to hunt and hunt birds they do, great gundogs...but they were party to several broods of ducks in my house and somehow they know that the ducks are mine and not to be touched. Figure that out. I free range my ducks on my property and they only issue I have is that my wiemeraners will 'herd' the ducks back toward the house if they get close to the imaginary border I have my dogs trained to...other than that they pretty much ignore the ducks and the ducks ignore the dogs.

Anyways as far as training I never did anything special. When they were in the house I never let the dogs near the brooder alone but if they were curious I didn't freak out either. When I was near the brooder of course the dogs were too..if I picked up a duck and they came over to sniff I let them while holding them...any aggressive of prey type vibes I got were immediatly met with a stearn warning that they are MY ducks let them alone. So in other words the dogs got to see and smell and learned that otherwise these were my pets too. I never got nervous with my dogs around them and I think the ducks and dogs both sensed this. After that it was a few supervised weeks when they were both running around outside at the same time with the same rules ( I never yelled when they went near each other unless the dog was 'rambunctious') I made it a non issue unless aggressive behavior was noted and pretty soon the dogs and ducks did too.

In fact now sometimes the ducks hear things and alert the dogs...sometimes vice versa....and predation is a non issue because the predators who have tried to mess around the duckhouse had a few weims chasing them thru the woods and don't mess around after that because they never know when the dogs may be coming...and I have every duck predator there is in the woods here...coyotes..foxes...coons...eagles...hawks...fishers...mink etc.

 

[horsewoman54]

I know Pit Bulls get a bad rap, but mine loves our ducklings. She hovers over them in the brooder tub and watches them swim. She's been around chickens and ignores them. She loves to follow my horses in the pasture and lays down in shade and acts like a shepherd, just watching over them. She is absolutely wonderful around our parakeets too. I think you just have to teach them in the beginning and I let mine sniff the birds and she justs whines as she watches them run around. We have never had her attack a chicken or duck and she is five. When we brought the ducklings home, they are two Pekins, she laid outside the closed door the whole night. She is wonderful in that way.