Ways of hunting

Today I was playing fetch with Natasha and it got me thinking. When she's "hunting" the ball, she runs towards it, bats at it with her paws, briskly stops and turns around and then fetches it, instead of just catching the ball with ther mouth.

I've also heard that some other sighthounds, instead of following the prey, run next to it. So I'm curious.

How does your dogs "hunt" and "kill" their "prey"?

That's play not hunting. Sighthounds running for real will sometimes use their paws to trip game before grabbing it. Most will simply go for the catch and kill. They generally have to be taught to be soft mouthed in order to bring game back live to the hand.

When we play fetch with Abrams, and the ball stops rolling, he'll often stop, stalk up to it, then pounce like a Coyote. LOL Rose and her mom would do the same thing to shrews and moles they unearthed, so I'm sure there is some instinctual basis to it and not just play.

When Strider and Kaia pull down a coyote, she'll run alongside it until she can grab its head/scruff. If it keeps running she'll run alongside it until Strider hamstrings it.

If it's something like a bunny or raccoon, they just run up and chomp it. Strider is naturally soft mouthed. As long as it doesn't try to bite him he'll bring it back live. The first couple of raccoons he got he tried to pick up and carry back . . . he just kills them now. Kaia just kills everything.

They'll course cats and run on top of them. They've never hurt a cat though. I imagine they'd act differently if they were actually trying to grab/hurt them vs. scare the daylights out of them.

Obi has killed a groundhog and a skunk. (RIP critters...). Both times he has grabbed them, gave them a hard shake and let them go. The groundhog he had to pick up and shake twice before it died but it was very quick. The skunk wasn't very big and died right away. (Well, right after it sprayed him naturally...)