We have just got ourselves a gorgeous 5 month old Weimaraner bitch called Lily. She is generally quite well-behaved and will come when called. However, when out on walks, we let her off the lead so that she can have some good runs and due to her obvious hunting nature she quite often manages to find dead animals. This has included rabbits, birds and even a rat. She then eats them and we are worried that this will cause infections. When she finds these animals it is impossible to get her to come to us as she obviously knows she is doing something we don't like. How do we get her to come to us and leave the animal alone? We don't want to be forced to keep her on the lead at all times as she obviously enjoys the freedom when allowed to roam. We would appreciate any helpful hints and tips.

Many thanks

Sam and Diederick
Lyon, France

You have bought a dog which was bred to hunt and therefore it will. Eating dead animals will generally cause no harm unless, of course, they have been poisoned. Scavenging is a perfectly normal behaviour for dogs. All my weims have eaten dead animals whether or not they have been responsible for killing them. None have come to any harm!

She does not "know that she is doing something you don't like" but to her this food is a valuable resource that she is not going to surrender.

One of the ways you can resolve this problem is to train her to bring the animals to you first for permission to eat and then you can take the animal off her and either return it or swap it for something extremely high value; difficult because most things cannot compete with carrion :). They are a dog that hunts, points and retrieves and so training the retrieve will help you achieve this.

HTH