The amazing reaction was from my dog. I had a female Golden Retriever at the time, may she RIP. She knew the wod “bird” because she would accompany me to the barn to feed the birds.
When I couldn’t find Danny Boy, I patrolled the property, looking for him — under the hedge rows, up in the trees, every place I could think. I was distraught. My husband kept saying that I’d find him — he was just hiding.
TWO DAYS after his disappearance (and aftr a light rain) I finally spoke aloud. I stood on my front porch as said to my dog, “Where’s the bird?”
Terra’s head snapped up, and she immediately set off down the driveway with her nose to the ground. She stopped about 5 feet from the road and stood still with her nose in the lawn. I ran down there to see what had her attention (checking the shrubbery along both sides of the drive as I went.
When I caught up, I chided her, “Oh, don’t be so stupid. There’s no bird there.” Then, I looked at where she was pointing and noticed that there were some tiny feathers in the grass. I picked the up and recognizzed them as neck feathers — and they were broken. They hadn’t been shed naturally.
When my husband got home, he found the tail feathers just across the road, They’d been TORN from the carcass, and we never found the carcass. The trapper said that the mother fox would have dragged it to her den where they would dine on it for a week.
My question: how did Terra know that I was looking for this particular peacock? I had 8 others in the barn. When I asked, “Where’s the bird?” why didn’t Terra take off toward the barn where there were more birds? Obviously she tracked the scent of the targeted peacock because that is exactly the route the trapper reconstructed later. But, I had peacocks wandering all over the place at the time. How did she know that it was that one particular bird that I was hunting? Could she smell the fear in the trail? Could she smell the combo of fox and bird that alerted her?
And how come she was able to track that bird so confidently when it had RAINED since the peacock went missing?
Animals are amazing.
that is truly an amazing story. what a great dog.
What an intuitive dog. It’s obvious why she was so dear to you.