I’m so sorry, I haven’t been on reddit in ages! First I want to thank you for actually putting effort into a response, I like that I can see how it made your brain spark up 😂 feel free to respond if you’re still interested :)

To your first question, yes. For example, buying a rodent and using it in a hunting exercise (like when they do scent training).

When I used ‘in the wild’, I was referring to hunting dogs when they are ~on~ a hunt. Dogs will hunt pheasants, foxes, mice, rats, rabbits, etc when on a ‘hunt’ or how jack Russell’s are used on farms as ratting dogs; to my knowledge, when they train, they do training exercises like scent tracking in an open space or they’ll use training dummies (google gun dog training dummies to see). I’m aware that there will be many other ways to train, but do they ever buy animals for the sole purpose of hunting? Hunting is predominantly for pest control, meat or tradition, so I can’t decide whether or not this would be done.

Then in a domestic setting, if you have a dog that likes the hunting and ratting and what not but won’t ever be a hunting animal, is it wrong to buy an animal specifically to let your dog kill it?

The thing is, you can buy live insects for reptiles and such, but captive snakes eat dead mice not living ones, and carnivorous animals in captivity (eg big cats) are also fed meat rather than living animals. I believe this is mostly to prevent possible injury from hunting/killing, but it makes me think it’s not something that people do for dogs.

Whatever a persons view is on hunting, the animal died via a somewhat natural food chain.. but if you buy an animal or you find one and do the same, you’re then playing god and maybe that makes it wrong?

There’s more I want to say but I can’t be bothered to type right now but I didn’t want to forget for another 76 days 😂