Kim_MacMillan
Posted : 11/21/2009 11:33:21 AM
If you have dogs that look upon pet birds as prey, it is difficult if not impossible to really ever change that. You can temporarily inhibit them, but you can not ever really get rid of it, and you can never really trust them together. I have a mature female lovebird now, and before her I had another female, and with terriers they can not be together. Ever. End of story.
She is on a cage that is three feet off the ground, so the dogs cannot reach her. At one time her cage was beside the couch, and Gaci would get up on the back of the couch while we were watching TV and lay by the cage watching her. Echo (the lovie) would come up to her and start preening Gaci's hairs on her nose...it was cute to watch, but that's about as far as it'll ever go. Because Gaci would snatch and eat her in a second if the opportunity arose, and Gaci was not allowed in that room if we were not home.
Birds have that odd, unpredictable capability of flight (even clipped birds!), and dogs have that odd, often predictable but not always drive of predation, and the too do not go together very well. Because birds are a prey animal, they act in totally prey-like ways, which only work to encourage the predation desire in dogs who like little fast moving, squeaky animals.
I love my birds, and I love my dogs, but they never have access to each other.