Chasing the Cat (cat heads II)

[Roxee's Dad]

Hi Saskia,
Wow, what you explained to Beth may have helped us. :D

LittleBit was a stray that went unclaimed, she fit in so well with us that we decided to keep her. Originally thought to be a Pug / Beagle mix, her DNA test came back with nothing on her immediate parents but Chi and Papillon in her 2nd line. So who knows. (pic is in my album)

She likes to chase things, squirrels, rabbits etc... oh and our cat (Kittee). The first time she chased a rabbit, I let out a very loud ehhhhh! She stopped in her tracks and put her head down. She's pretty good now out in the yard although she will see a rabbit and when I see her start staring and get fixated on the rabbit, I just give a little ehhhh! and she stops looking. So far so good.

Now about the cat. Kittee was a feral kitten that I caught when I was doing catch / Spay / Neuter/ and release of feral cats. She was about 5 weeks old when she got caught in one of my humane traps. I usually caught them on Thursday night, got them fixed on Friday and they would spend Friday night in our climate-controlled warehouse. If all was okay, I would release them on Sat morning. Well Kittee being so young and being 115 degrees outside, we decide to bring her home for the weekend. (That was almost 5 years ago) long weekend.:o So I believe she still has some (very little) but some feral still in her. She is afraid of anything that is not normal routine and will hide, sometimes for days until whatever isn't normal goes away (grandson or overnight visitors) OR until what isn't normal routine becomes part of the norm in our house.

When LittleBit chased the cat, Rozee and Mickee got into the act and chased her too.:eek: So then the cat was P.O'd :mad: at all the dogs for 5 or 6 weeks.

So now after 6 months, LittleBit is finally not chasing Kittee and Kittee is starting to get brave and walk by littleBit. But sometimes Kittee still hisses at LittleBit. So far so good in the last few weeks.:) But I am still a bit apprehensive.

If I had your post to refer to so many months ago, it would all make sense to me and maybe we could have gotten to this point much sooner. :)

So thank you for that. I may still need it but I can also see how it would pertain to other situations.

[SasAndYunah]

Hi John,

that's why I always try to explain the why's and how's...because often it will open someone else's eyes too :) Glad it was of some (late) help to you as well :)

But the basics apply for any situation. So often we find ourselves in a negative spiral when things don't go as we would like them to go with our dogs. Before we know it, we're only busy with telling the dog "no!" , "stop that!" or "leave it!"... And that's not a good starting point for any dog to learn something. And very often, the dog can't even help he's not behaving as we want him to. The situation is too difficult for the dog to handle, we expect too much, too soon...we forget to take the breed into consideration or overlook the fact that a specific breed was bred for a specific task. And of course there are exceptions, I'm sure we could find a hound somewhere who doesn't chase moving objects :D But looking at the breed and the tasks it was originally bred for, is a good starting point to figure out some behaviours or to predict some problems. So my goal is too always turn a negative situation in a positive one and to make people understand that usually it's not even because the dog doesn;t want to obbey or listen, but because..he's a dog :) And if you can turn a negative situation into a positive one, the dog is much more likely to respond to you and able to learn... And besides, it's also benificiairy to the bond between dog and owner. Image being told "no"...most of the time. Geezzzzz, even I would become rebellious in that case ;) The "no's" and "don'ts" should be reserved for dangerous situations only...and all other things should be positive, even adressing unwanted behaviour. By saying "no" all the time, it doesn't change the behaviour and the dog will become more then likely more rebellious eventually. That's why I always emphasize to people that they should set up their dog to succeed, not to fail :)

Okay, enough of me and my dogtalk. I better get some sleep, I have to teach French for 3 hours tomorrow morning, so I better get some rest if I want to make some sense to my student ;)

All our best to you and yours,

Saskia and Yunah :)