toddjconklin
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2021
- Messages
- 7
- Reaction score
- 1
Hey all,
New keeper here, had our little Childrens for about a month now. He's a champion eater - maybe a little too good which I'll post separately when I've collected more info, but I had an interesting incident yesterday, when our dog (a medium Groodle) discovered the snake for the first time.
Before we got him, I did heaps of research, which essentially said dogs and snakes are not a problem. There are a bunch of very rare, sensational headlines about a large Diamond swallowing someone's little Terrier or Chihuahua, which if I was the snake I probably would too just to shut them up. But in each of these cases the snake massively outweighed the dog. Otherwise, google only comes up with two supposed outcomes, which I mostly found on the Ball Python forums (like here or here or here):
1. The snake will not register the dog's smell as food as it's not in their food chain, so will not have an impact.
2. The snake may act defensively around the dog as the dog would be perceived as a predator (which is probably a safe assumption on the snake's part)
So you can imagine my surprise when our new little 70g Childrens appears to be sizing up our 25kg dog! Talk about a death wish - if it wasn't for the glass, he wouldn't have even had time to strike before he became the dog's newest chew toy.
I took a video and wanted to get some thoughts. Check it out:
So... yeah. I guess I would like people's thoughts on the python's behaviour. Is he just real curious, or am I right in thinking the python is looking at my dog as food? And if so, surely wanting to eat something that is like 20 times it's size is not normal? And what does this means in the way we handle him? I always have fresh clothes and washed hands when we pick him up, but if the dogs scent triggers a feeding response we have problems, because the dog's smell is everywhere in the house and is unavoidable. He'll pretty much always be in feeding mode if that's the case.
Thanks
New keeper here, had our little Childrens for about a month now. He's a champion eater - maybe a little too good which I'll post separately when I've collected more info, but I had an interesting incident yesterday, when our dog (a medium Groodle) discovered the snake for the first time.
Before we got him, I did heaps of research, which essentially said dogs and snakes are not a problem. There are a bunch of very rare, sensational headlines about a large Diamond swallowing someone's little Terrier or Chihuahua, which if I was the snake I probably would too just to shut them up. But in each of these cases the snake massively outweighed the dog. Otherwise, google only comes up with two supposed outcomes, which I mostly found on the Ball Python forums (like here or here or here):
1. The snake will not register the dog's smell as food as it's not in their food chain, so will not have an impact.
2. The snake may act defensively around the dog as the dog would be perceived as a predator (which is probably a safe assumption on the snake's part)
So you can imagine my surprise when our new little 70g Childrens appears to be sizing up our 25kg dog! Talk about a death wish - if it wasn't for the glass, he wouldn't have even had time to strike before he became the dog's newest chew toy.
I took a video and wanted to get some thoughts. Check it out:
So... yeah. I guess I would like people's thoughts on the python's behaviour. Is he just real curious, or am I right in thinking the python is looking at my dog as food? And if so, surely wanting to eat something that is like 20 times it's size is not normal? And what does this means in the way we handle him? I always have fresh clothes and washed hands when we pick him up, but if the dogs scent triggers a feeding response we have problems, because the dog's smell is everywhere in the house and is unavoidable. He'll pretty much always be in feeding mode if that's the case.
Thanks