Maddi and her unwilling playmates

New Topic

Maddi and her unwilling playmates

Posted : 3/27/2006 4:11:02 PM

Well, it's been a few months, and Maddi has behaviorably gotten much better (I think I have too in my ways of dealing with her [

]). While I wait for some of the stuff I ordered off of amazon, I was wondering if I could get any pointers to maybe getting her to stop chasing the cats so much?

In case anybody forgot, she's a 15 month old Malamute. She weighs between 75 and 80lbs, and I am worried she's going to hurt herself or the cat. Worse, one of my cats instigates the chase every chance she can get Angry

. Any tips on training for cats? lol

Here's the situation:
Maddi sees the cat in the living room. The cat sees that Maddi sees him/her, bolts behind the couch into the front room. Maddi pole-vaults the couch and takes off up the stares after the cat. Maddi corners cat, and tries to play with the cat (play bows, fairly gentle pawing, etc). Cat, terrified, screams bloody murder and bloodies Maddi's nose. Maddi has a high pain tolerance and doesn't give a hoot her nose is bleeding. Maddi continues to antagonize the cat. The cat runs under the bed, into the closet, where ever it can get away from the dog. Dog follows and antagonizes until I catch up, put a leash on her, and walk her back down stairs where she stays with me.

I have tried to modify this type of behavior, but, once she sees the cat, she's in the "zone" if you know what I mean. Only the most slimy and delicious of treats can distract her, and only for the second it takes to grab the treat from my hand or do the commands... then she's back to the "zone." She gets extremely focused, and I have a very hard time getting her attention.

There are 5 cats in the house, so, you can imagine, this happens at least 5X a day... only 4x if I'm lucky[

].

TIA

Mia

Posted : 3/28/2006 11:42:51 AM

Have you tried gating off a room or the stairs completely to interrupt her chase? It would also make a place the cats can completely escape from the dog, as her managing to chase them repeatedly isn't helping the situation. The more she chases, the more reinforcing the behavior gets. You want to stop the chase way before she pole vaults the couch.

I had a similar problem, with my dog and single cat. I blocked off all the rooms upstairs in my house with gates to let the cat have free run of some rooms without worrying about the dog chasing her. I put her food and litter box in one of the gated rooms, so all her meetings with the dog were voluntary, not getting dogjacked on the way to the litterbox. Toka had a similar interest level in my cat, play bowing, licking and holding her down while licking. The cat hated it. At least your cats will scratch, mine still won't, even when pinned to the ground. She just growled and hissed.

I also had supervised meetings. I used hot dog pieces and with Toka on a leash, gave her them for being calme when the cat sat on a table nearby. Actually the cat got hot dog pieces for coming downstairs. Most of it though was teaching toka drop it and leave it with her toys and food, and migrating those commands to include the cat.

I also tried enforcing the cats growling and hissing. Toka learned if the cat is growling I'm going to make Toka go sit in the hall or kitchen, so she has a bigger tendency to back off when the cat growls. The cat can sleep on my bed and Toka can not. Basically pointing out the cat had a few more rights and priviledges then Toka. Toka also spent her first several months living with me on leash, so I could keep control when she wanted to chase the cat.

The only problem area I have left is the bottom of the stairs. My cat can come to the third stair up and Toka doesn't care, and one downstairs she doesn't care, but Toka still insists on chasing somewhat in the living room, yet they can lay side by side ignoring each other upstairs, so I know we're getting there. The living room was historically their worst room. The rooms I gated off they interact the best in, and while she still sometimes jumps the cat, I'm not worried either are going to get seriously hurt anymore.