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Old August 21st, 2008, 12:30 PM
Veesmart Veesmart is offline
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Question STOP chasing the cats!!!

I have a 6 month old Standard Poodle Cross. We adopted her from the Toronto Humane Society when she was a baby. For the most part, she is what we refer to as our "Lucky Dog"...as in we really got lucky with her.

She has a very calm, happy demeanor and has completed 2 different courses of Puppy School (and is now enrolled in a "focusing" course which might help this issue). For a 6 month old she is doing quite well, and we are very pleased with her training/behavior.

The only problem we are having, is her obsession with chasing/barking/terrorizing our 2 cats. While for the most part she is very responsive to commands, put one of the cats in her sight and she will chase them at top speed until they manage to find cover.

When this happens she will not respond to her name, she will not respond to her name when there are treats/food being offered. She will not allow us to get close enough to grab her. If any of us see the cats coming we will hold her and tell her to sit/down etc,wait until the cat gets to safe ground (out of sight), then try to continue playing/training......NOPE she is gone in whatever direction the cat went. Even if we try to remove her from whatever room the cat just walked in to.

You know when you have a puppy at home.....and they could be the most well behaved puppy until they get the "puppy crazies"....where for maybe 10 minutes they tear around the house like a bat out of hell, and the back legs seem to run faster then their front legs, and there is no reasoning with them...they just have to get the energy out.

This is very similar to that...only at the cat's expense, which is unacceptable in our house. We have no problem with the crazy high energy behavior that goes along with a puppy, we just can't continue to allow our cats to be terrorized.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (especially by the pussycats!)!!!!

Thanks.
V
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Old August 21st, 2008, 01:12 PM
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Folkwitch Folkwitch is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2008
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When DH and I joined households, his two Italians saw my cats as strangers and did the same thing although they had lived with another cat previously. The cure? We leashed them inside the house and would NOT let them run at the cats. Then we taught them the "get the cat" command because one of my cats used to bolt out the door and "get the cat" meant the dogs ran at the escapee and kept him in one place (no nipping, just barking) until I could grab him. Just DON'T say "get the cat" in the house!!
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Old August 21st, 2008, 01:21 PM
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sugarcatmom sugarcatmom is offline
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I agree that your pup should be leashed in the house until this behaviour is under better control. There's a good article here on how to do that: http://www.labadoption.org/linkpages...icles/Cats.pdf

Also, do your cats have some good vertical escape routes, like a tall cat condo or bookshelves or something?
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