AU my golden retriever "bird dog" incident

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Stormy Peak
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Joined: 17 years ago
Location: Idaho

AU my golden retriever "bird dog" incident

Post by Stormy Peak »

I let him and Jaya outside yesterday afternoon, and left the door opened as it was nice outside. I barely sat down when I heard AU just going off his rocker with the barking. I got up and looked out the screen door..expecting to see him at the neighbor's fence line, barking at them. :oops:

But he was on the north side of my property next to the 10 foot tall chain link fencing the Department of Transportation has between my property and their gravel lot. AU is going crazy, digging at the dirt at the bottom of the fence. I could tell he was focused upon something - I couldn't see it, as his body was blocking it. I was hoping it wasn't a skunk. :?
I called him...he ignored me. :roll:
So I put my slippers on and went outside to see what he as looking at.

Just on the other side of the fence was a baby goose...about a 1 1/2 feet in length. It was laying all the way down, with it's head on the ground, it's beak kind of opening and closing and it was fluttering it's little wings a bit. I thought...oh no, it must have got separated from it's mom and siblings....wandered around and finally collapsed from heat exhaustion right there by the fence where AU - my bird dog - found it.

The dirt there is really hard packed, and I figured I would go get my water bottle, to drip some water into the gosling's beak as soon as I could dig under the fence with a hand spade to capture it and put it someplace safe until I could get a hold of Fish and Game.

I didn't want AU digging...his barking is his only bad habit and he doesn't need to learn another by realizing he can dig under a fence and get his head through the hole.
So I had him come into the house with me.

I was only gone from the fence for about 1 minute - as my water bottle was on the peninsula a few feet inside the door, and the digging tool was on the porch in a tomato pot from last year. I went back over to the fence with the water and the hand spade...and gosling was gone. :(

I now think that what happened was - a predator, something bigger than a skunk or a cat..such as a fox, or coyote had the baby goose and was running along the fence line and dropped it when AU started barking and rushed over to the fence.

The second I dragged AU away and went into the house...it must have been watching from behind some low piles of salt and gravel that are out there, and ran back and grabbed it. There was no way for that gosling to have got up and wander off far enough to get behind anything, it also just looked too weak to even move when I saw it.
I kind of wished I had left AU outside, his presence probably would have kept away what ever went back for it.
But then too...if what I think happened, did happened, I might have pulled a very injured baby goose into my care and have no way to help it - thus prolonging it's suffering. I just hope it didn't suffer long after whatever grabbed it got a hold of it again.

Not the best ending...but i'm still glad AU alerted me to the situation. Jaya just doesn't bark at stuff or do anything that might call attention to herself. The two dogs sure have different personalities. AU really is a good watch dog, he's very much into checking out the property line and barking if he thinks I need to check something out. Sometimes, he's alerted me to deer, or men standing next to the Dept. of Transportation fence line. He doesn't bark at them or the neighbors unless they get like within 4 feet or so of the fences. With the neighbors... I wish he wouldn't bark at them even if they were touching the fence...he's learning though. Last year he was even barking at them when they one the other side of their lawn...and he was barking at cows 2 acres away...that looked like dots moving along the horizon. lol. I don't want a 'guard dog'...never want a dog that would attack someone...but I do like having a watch dog...one that will alert me to stuff going on outside of my house...and he's good at doing that even when he's in the house. : )

Stormy
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