…and that’s the thing nobody tells you when you’re standing in the breeder’s living room, watching those beautiful silver puppies tumbling over each other. You sit there and think how great they’ll look bounding along beside you, how eager they’ll be to learn, how devoted. No one tells you that you are about to take home a dog that was turned over literally hundreds of years to chase, catch and kill small animals.
I learned this the hard way with my first Weimaraner, Duke. Three weeks after bringing him home, my neighbor’s cat stumbled into our backyard. It was a warm spring day, Duke was nine months old and had not yet displayed much prey drive.
I thought they’d just sniff each other and go in separate directions as the cat made no movements that gave me any cause for alarm. They didn’t. The cat survived – barely – because I was standing right there and was quick to react.
That moment that changed everything about how I understood that breed. That switch that flipped in Duke’s brain?
That wasn’t aggression, that wasn’t bad behavior. It was hard-coded, innate instinct that had been sleeping on high alert until the right trigger arrived.
Understanding What You Are Truly Handling Here
Here’s my uncomfortable opinion that I would fight to the death defending: you cannot train prey drive out of a Weimaraner.
End of. I have heard trainers claim to the contrary, and I believe they are either lying or they have never trained a high-drive hunting dog. What you can do is control it, steer it away from undesired outlets and develop enough bite-inhibition so that your dog will make better choices during the moment.
But the innate drive?
Always there, waiting in the wings. Weimaraners were created in 19th century Germany as Berkhunde, all-purpose hunting dogs. They laid trail, pointed and fetched the game, ranging from waters and large birds to deer and boar.
This was not casual, weekend hobby hunting; this was serious business needing a serious dog that could think on its feet, not get tired and relentlessly pursue prey until killed. When you understand that history, that behavior begins to make sense. The prey drive in these dogs is introduced by movement.
Fast movement especially. An acorn squirrel scuttling across the yard, a rabbit sitting stock still as the hunter sprays inhalant, a cat dashing away from the approaching beast; these are not inherently interesting to the Weimaraner. They are the trigger for that behavior, activating instinct adapted from centuries of hunting.
I have watched Duke go from watching a squirrel zip past the patio door to on the hunt in less than a heartbeat; after twelve years of owning the breed, it still startles me. Now I would like to be blunt: I’m not sure if it differs between high-drive Weimaraners or if they get sensitized to certain stimuli more than others. I have owned three with very subtle distinctions; Duke was triggered most by ground animals, the Weimaraner I have now, Stella is obsessed with birds but all three had that primal intensity when they got the right sensation.
The Small Animal Prey Question
Am I able to have a Weimaraner and keep small pets like rabbits and guinea pigs or cats?
Statistically, yes I believe so, but you have to be realistic about your management. I know many people who have kept Weimaraners and cats, or the two breeds from the beginning: usually this only works if the cat was there before, the dog was brought in as a youngster and the cat has never been submissive. That is, it has stood its ground and not run from the dog initially because running triggers the chase response.
However this is not something I tell everyone. Even in homes where you think you can trust the situation after many years, I know too many heartbreaking instances where it all went wrong; perhaps the owners kept the dog and cat in separate rooms for years with doors and gates up to prevent cat from running and dog from being able to reach; maybe one day we have a thunderstorm and the dog is overcome with incontinence or fear-related arousal and the cat appears then, running and the dog must pursued. Whatever happens, it is a matter of a second or two for a lifetime of tragedy.
And with smaller caged animals like rabbits, guinea pigs or hamsters?
It is not enough to keep the dog physically away from the rabbits, you also have to take precautions. Your Weimaraner might be unable to reach the rabbit but that will not stop him from obsessively staring at it, barking at it and so on. And this is also stressful for the prey animal, no matter how well your Weimaraner is managed.
Chronic stress kills prey animals just as surely as teeth do, it takes longer.
Practical Management That Actually Works
The answer to all this prey drive?
Redirect that drive into options which are not damaging and build in enough impulse control so that your dog is better able to make rational decisions in the moment. To expand: first a physical outlet. A weary Weimaraner is generally much more manageable than a full of pent up prey drive Weimaraner.
But on top of that that took me a long time to discover: physical activity is far from enough. These dogs need work for their minds too – puzzle feeders, nosework, training sessions that direct their natural talents. A dog exhausted both ways is an easier dog.
Second, developing an unconditioned, absolute recall and emergency stop.
I mean unconditioned. Practice that hundreds of times in the minimum amount of distraction before supplementing with real stimuli that your dog actually adores.
The reason this is so important is that it allows you to develop a default response that theoretically can carry weight over a certain level of drive: it takes a lot of training, butt is way better for development that a dog with no preexisting works.
Third, be vigilant about management.
This means secure fencing, appropriate (six foot minimum; even then, some Weimaraners will leap) and double checked gates, leashed walks in open fields.
This is not failure; I think it would be irresponsible to rely on a recall, especially in a sport like lure coursing or field work, to prevent your dog from killing or maiming someone’s Rabbit or becoming a Rabid Street Spitting Mad Dog chasing the squirrel across the path. Better to be overvigilant.
Fourth, give your dog opportunities to do what they were intended to do; hunt legally.
Howl-imbibed coursing is truly fantastic: the dog gets to run flat out after prey with no chance of lunging or snapping: and no trainee gets bitten by mistake either. Flirt poles are foolproof for the backyard too. Some people do barn hunt or tracking.
Whatever allows them an outlet for those instincts. One thing I was surprised at discovering was how much better my Weimaraner Stella started to be to live with once I did regular nose work with her. I could not have been more impressed by how much that fed that need to be using the brain to hunt, the pressure of their natural impulse relief valve apparently prevented the utter obsession that was present beforehand.
Living with a Weim with an extreme prey drive is really not about eradicating the drive; it’s about acknowledging it and managing around it. And I think just about everyone will agree that is okay and not failure. The Weimaraner utilises its prey drive in a glorious, entrancing dog, be worthy of we.
I think 12 years later I will never stop remembering Duke because of that odd winter between his tenth and eleventh birthdays when he was temporarily homed elsewhere, and I will never stop wishing dearly that I knew what I was truly dealing with before it was such a devastating oversight in others.