newly adopted black lab and cats..... how to handle?

• 10-08-2007 11:22 AM

  layck00 Joined on 08-15-2007 Posts 10 Points 0

  newly adopted black lab and cats..... how to handle? Reply Contact Hello.  I just adopted a 1.5 year old black lab this past week from the humane society, Petey.  He seems to be a generally good dog, very happy and go-lucky.  Unfortunately, I had already put a hold on him when they gave us the information on him from his prior owner, which said he was not good with cats...... and we have three of them.  They did a cat test on him at the shelter before we took him home, which only consisted of them taking him into the cat room with all the cats in crates.  He did ok, just ignored the cats.  Now that we have him home though and the cats are loose in the house, he constantly wants to chase them around the house.  we haven't taken him off the leash in the house yet, but with him being 70 lbs, it is still pretty hard to control him when he wants to chase.  How do we get him to calm down and leave the cats alone?  I've been trying to take him out of the crate for about 30 minute at a time and working with him on sitting and just laying down, which works about 50% of the time- if he sees a cat out of the corner of his eye, he will immediately stand up.  My husband LOVES the cats and if it comes down to the dog or the cats, Petey will go back to the shelter.  How do I get Petey to calm down and chill around the house?

  Filed under: new home, cats Post Points: 0

• 10-08-2007 1:55 PM

  In reply to layck00

  Cita Joined on 12-13-2006 CT Posts 4,642 Points 735

  Re: newly adopted black lab and cats..... how to handle? Reply Contact  Here are a couple of threads by people with similar problems, maybe they'll be helpful! http://community.dog.com/forums/p/34519/432561.aspx#432561 http://community.dog.com/forums/p/216/3700.aspx#3700 http://community.dog.com/forums/p/54790/470490.aspx#470490 http://community.dog.com/forums/p/8173/105711.aspx#105711  Hope those are useful for you! Basically I think you'll have the most success if you 1) teach your dog a super-solid "leave it" or "freeze" or something similar, 2) get your cats un-afraid of the dog, 3) give your cats a dog-proof "escape area," and 4) work on desensitizing your dog to running cats. Good luck! Great job keeping Petey on leash for now, by the way. And welcome to the forum :)

  Filed under: chasing cats Post Points: 0

• 10-08-2007 11:06 PM

  In reply to layck00

  californiaglock Joined on 08-22-2007 Northern California, USA Posts 303 Points 95	Re: newly adopted black lab and cats..... how to handle? Reply Contact we have tried many differernt angles of training with my pitmix to deal with our cat. simply didnt do a darn thing. some dogs will forever chase cats no matter how much you try to train them.
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