Dogs Gently Bury Deceased Rabbit. Most Intriguing Behavior.

[dripbabygirl]

sorry for your lose

 

[dripbabygirl]

So as you know, this story involves a dead rabbit but the reason for telling this story is not to mourn the death of my favorite rabbit; I'm already doing that on my own.

First I should introduce my dogs.

Nitro is a year old Rottweiler and when I got her at 11 weeks, having never seen small animals before, was very curious with my rabbits. One day I came home from work to her burying one of my rabbits she had just mauled. She had found a way to removed the door to it's cage. I used it for training and everytime she got near the dead rabbit laying on the ground, I firmly reprimanded her verbally; but never using physical punishment. Along with that and my sadness and tears she got the point very quickly and has never tried to kill a rabbit since. At the time of that happening, I said "if this is what it takes(her killing one of my beloved rabbits) to train her to leave the rabbits alone, I'm okay with it". I still didn't trust her completely around them although she seemed to become friends with them through the bars. She is notorious for killing chickens tho. I have not been successful in training her out of that.

Bailey is a 7 month old Boxer that has never really shown a prey drive. Which I think is in part is because we got him at 6 weeks old and he was quickly introduced to everyone on the farm.

Over the holiday, I was gone 15.5 hours away from home. The day that I was on the way home, it got really cold and windy and home. My rabbits are individually in temporary cages on stilts. My dogs were in the backyard were the rabbits are housed. One of the cages caught wind and the whole thing literally tipped over. Whereas one of the other cages(Ash's cage) the top half came off the bottom half. There were zip ties securing the two parts together but Ash had chewed them off and I failed to replace them before going on my trip. So then Ash was loose. My brother who was at home looked everywhere for him. I was anxiety ridden for the rest of the drive home. When I got home late I looked everywhere for him to no avail. I prayed fervently and then went to bed. Early the next morning I relooked in every spot I had the night before. Still to no avail. Finally I decided to get Bailey and see if he could sniff Ash out. He took me to a spot with a mound of dirt in a corner that was hardly noticeable with no dig marks. Bailey slightly dug at it to show some white fur that obviously was Ash's. I put Bailey in the pen with Nitro and dug up Ash. He was curled up in the cutest little ball with his front paws under his head and his back feet to his head. His eyes were closed and he almost looked just asleep. My first thought was that when he escaped, the dogs got him and killed him. I stood by the dog pen cradling Ash and crying my heart out. The dogs also started crying and were obviously very sad. Bailey stood on his hind legs and kept putting his paws on Nitro as if to say "she did it!" and kept looking from me to her violently. Then I realized that Ash didn't have any teeth marks whatsoever and wasn't at all mauled. And if the dogs had killed him, he wouldn't be in a curled up position and with his eyes closed. After discussing it with my mom, we came to the conclusion that the cage must've fell on Ash in some way for him to sustain internal injuries although he didn't die right away. So he curled up in pain to die. (What a horrible dead and to think it could've been prevented...) and the dogs found him and maybe realized that I would think they had killed him if I found him. So they gently carried him(not ever puncturing the skin) across the yard to a little corner and carefully covered him up.
Idk why but... even tho I'm heartbroken about the death of Ash, to think my dogs gave him a burial is comforting... after crying and holding Ash for awhile, I returned him to the burial spot my dogs had chosen and gently reburied him...

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Love you forever, Ash...❤

Okay sorry I said this wasn't for mourning...

aw cute I love the white and black