A friend from the dog forum I'm a member of needs helps IDing this snake. She found it recently on her vacation property in South Carolina. I think it's a Timber (Canebrake) Rattler but that's only a guess from googling images. She'd like to know for sure. Also any helpful info on how to live safely around these snakes especially since she has dogs that might investigate a moving reptile.
Also if any of you that have dogs and live around rattlesnakes have any common sense advice about snake avoidance training for dogs, she'd really appreciate it. She has sight hounds that have a huge prey drive so she really needs to teach them fast about going after rattlers. I found some stuff online but I figured common sense, hands on advice from you folks about dogs and venomous snakes would be better.
We use the " leave it " command.. we train our dogs that regardless of what they find on the ground if we say "leave it" they basically don't sniff, lick, grab or even get with in arms reach of it. We started this with treats laying them on the floor and using a leash to control them its takes some time but even if the dogs have one of their toys we can tell them to "Drop it" and " leave it" and even from across the yard.. they will and then its just a matter of come..this comes in handy with all the Cotton Mouths we have..
my dog has a prey drive unfortunately but for some reason is spooked by snakes. maybe take a snake shed over and see if the dogs will go after the snake. may help ease your friends mind. i agree with freakie though...all dogs should know that command just incase.
It looks to me like a canebrake rattlesnake. Where is she located at in sc? We hav siberian huskies and a german shepard and the shepard does not bother snakes. The huskies on the other hand are a bit more stubborn and very curious. Our smaller female was the worse. And what we did with her was got a friends eastern diamondback rattlesnake and put in a vision cage in our drive way and let the dog here the rattle going. Whenever she would get close we would yell out the command. After time and time again curiousity got the best of her so we bought a shock collar and she went near the snake twice and got shocked twice and she hasnt been back around a snake ever since then. I can bring out a burm or retic and let them in the yard and shes not the least bit curious.
Thanks for the helpful info folks, keep it coming.
I'm not sure where exactly in SC she is but I'm passing along anything you all tell me to help her deal with this properly as well as any decent websites.
I found a few sites with trainers that do snake aversion training using shock collars and captive rattlers. I've passed those along to her as well and of course, the leave it command which I'm sure she already uses with her dogs (they are really gorgeous, well cared for pups).
Originally Posted by waltah!
Ok, I'm going out on a limb here a will say that it's definitely not a CornsnakeThanks for the giggle!
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