Spot the trout

The dog's name, of course, is Trout. A relatively long legged Jack Russell, the dog is a possum and bunny mass murderer, truth be known. Our friends in New Zealand, Serge & Sharron have a couple of Jacks and while the older, Mr Bean, moves a wee bit slower now, the tandem have likely taken a toll on the local introduced wildlife population. Not to worry, there are some 70M possum in New Zealand thanks to their introduction to the wild years ago. On one walk back to the car across open, grassy pastures, we watched Trout pick up a scent of a bunny, doing loops and cross tracks some 4-500 m in front of us before coming onto his target. Then all hell broke loose as he tore after it all the way back and likely that much again, before finally forcing the bunny into a muddy pond, which slowed the bunny down, allowing for the ambush. Trout got to it and that was the end of the bunny. It was an amazing chase.

And in fairness to Mr Bean, the spoils were shared.
Life is a little different in New Zealand. The food chain is real, the way of life is simple - death will happen. Dogs chase things, kill things. So do hunters. That's the way of it. It's very real. It's different, but it's quite the way it is.
As non-hunters, generally non-killer types that play with fish in our catch & release, we see little death. I think AJ & I were of mixed feelings on the event initially, but see it as "it is", not as right or wrong. It was fascinating to watch the dogs work. In a land of over abundance in possum and bunny population, with no predators, allowing the dogs to play with a few isn't hurting much - big picture. It's an interesting place to observe, so different. Some would be offended (and some reading this might be), some won't be. One thing is for certain, when allowing introduced populations to explode, unchecked, is there any moral code when it comes to allowing another introduced animal to play with the former?