Dog Wants To Eat Cat, What To Do About It

[lovemesideways]

So friend of mine has been bringing his GSD over. 10 month old MASSIVE boy, and he thinks my cat Rusty looks delicious. He's met a few cats and the only one that told him off, he ran away from in terror and would not go near. The rest ran away so I think its firmly established in his mind that cat equals delicious running fluffy thing.

Rusty will not fight back, either he just sits there and ignored the dog, or runs away.

I want to make it 100% known to this GSD that the cat is off limits. I'm not really sure how to go about it though. I'm gonna be doing a bit of OB work with him for fun, so if I can work it into that, it would be good. I might be looking after him 1 day a week so having him not want to eat the cat would be great.

He will focus in on the cat and even a smack on the muzzle or ear (from his owner, not me!) didn't deter him from staring intently at Rusty. So far we've just kept them seperate to stop anything happening

I got no problems with proper use of correction (though not a fan of smacking on the muzzle...) but not sure if that would be my best course of action. Any ideas would be appreciated :D

[corvus]

I was watching Grisha Stewart talk about this on her BAT dvd today. She tried using BAT to train her dog to behave appropriately around cats. She didn't say how far she got, but noted that even though her dog wanted to chase the cat, moving closer to the cat was not a functional reward, whereas moving away was. Interesting.

[Staranais]

I trained my old stafford to be trustworthy around cats. He was rather high prey drive & had killed a kitten and several other small animals before I got him.

From the first moment he came to live with me, I always supervised him when he was with the cat, and always interrupted him & removed him from the room immediately at any sign of interest in the cat whatsoever (however innocent that attention appeared & well before he went into any type of prey drive towards the cat - looking at the cat or giving it any attention whatsoever was simply not tolerated).

Worked very well, I was amazed by how solid he was around cats in the end - in the sense that he was not just merely showing good self control, he was genuinely just not interested in cats, they were not a prey drive trigger even when running away from him. However, I have only done it once so not sure how well it would work for other dogs.

Having a cat that knows not to run away & trigger prey drive initially was a huge help. Instigating the rules as soon as he came to my house probably helped enormously (new house = new rules seems easy for them to understand). Plus gave him an alternative acceptable outlet for prey drive satisfaction with lots of tug games & working in drive may have also helped?

Nowadays, I'd probably use low stim ecollar as a P+/R- for looking at/away from the cat, as I suspect it would get the job done quicker with less risk of setback due to inconsistency, but I don't suggest you play round with that without professional guidance.

I'd also wonder if you could use a counter-conditioning protocol to change the dog's feelings towards the cat, i.e. make the appearance of the cat predictive of (calming) food rather than of an (arousing) chase/bite, but I have never done so & think it might take a while to get really solid, especially if the dog already has a history of going into prey drive towards the cat.

ETA, I suppose you could also just punish the GSD for any predatory attention shown to the cat with a correction collar or similar, but IMO the risk with that is that if you are not careful you may create a dog that really still wants to chase the cat, but is restraining himself from doing so in order to avoid a correction. That's far better than having a GSD with no self control, of course, but I feel it is inferior to creating the mindset that he genuinely doesn't want to eat the cat. I'd get professional help if you want to go that route so you know you're doing it right.

Edited January 8, 2011 by Staranais

[lovemesideways]

I was watching Grisha Stewart talk about this on her BAT dvd today. She tried using BAT to train her dog to behave appropriately around cats. She didn't say how far she got, but noted that even though her dog wanted to chase the cat, moving closer to the cat was not a functional reward, whereas moving away was. Interesting.

Er, whats BAT?

I trained my old stafford to be trustworthy around cats. He was rather high prey drive & had killed a kitten and several other small animals before I got him.

From the first moment he came to live with me, I always supervised him when he was with the cat, and always interrupted him & removed him from the room immediately at any sign of interest in the cat whatsoever (however innocent that attention appeared & well before he went into any type of prey drive towards the cat - looking at the cat or giving it any attention whatsoever was simply not tolerated).

Worked very well, I was amazed by how solid he was around cats in the end - in the sense that he was not just merely showing good self control, he was genuinely just not interested in cats, they were not a prey drive trigger even when running away from him. However, I have only done it once so not sure how well it would work for other dogs.

Having a cat that knows not to run away & trigger prey drive initially was a huge help. Instigating the rules as soon as he came to my house probably helped enormously (new house = new rules seems easy for them to understand). Plus gave him an alternative acceptable outlet for prey drive satisfaction with lots of tug games & working in drive may have also helped?

Nowadays, I'd probably use low stim ecollar as a P+/R- for looking at/away from the cat, as I suspect it would get the job done quicker with less risk of setback due to inconsistency, but I don't suggest you play round with that without professional guidance.

I'd also wonder if you could use a counter-conditioning protocol to change the dog's feelings towards the cat, i.e. make the appearance of the cat predictive of (calming) food rather than of an (arousing) chase/bite, but I have never done so & think it might take a while to get really solid, especially if the dog already has a history of going into prey drive towards the cat.

ETA, I suppose you could also just punish the GSD for any predatory attention shown to the cat with a correction collar or similar, but IMO the risk with that is that if you are not careful you may create a dog that really still wants to chase the cat, but is restraining himself from doing so in order to avoid a correction. That's far better than having a GSD with no self control, of course, but I feel it is inferior to creating the mindset that he genuinely doesn't want to eat the cat. I'd get professional help if you want to go that route so you know you're doing it right.

Really interesting reply! ;) Gonna have to answer it when I don't have 30 seconds on the computer before running out the door!

[Jigsaw]

Link to BAT

"Behavior Adjustment Training, or BAT, uses environmental consequences to reward socially acceptable choices. In a nutshell, BAT gives the dogs a chance to learn to control their environment through peaceful means. It’s very empowering to the dog, in a good way." from website.

Read the info, the Q&A's and watch the videos. BAT is a very interesting method of training reactive dogs.

[Kynan]

This ebook from Leerburg may help: Introducing dogs (or puppies) into homes with cats

[corvus]

I'd also wonder if you could use a counter-conditioning protocol to change the dog's feelings towards the cat, i.e. make the appearance of the cat predictive of (calming) food rather than of an (arousing) chase/bite, but I have never done so & think it might take a while to get really solid, especially if the dog already has a history of going into prey drive towards the cat.

You can, theoretically. For Erik that kind of thing doesn't take that long, but it's important to be consistent and keep being consistent. Steven Lindsay has a nice calming protocol that uses several cues with the expectation that any one of them will be able to calm the dog if needed. IME this works, but I'm still finding my way with it. There's a balance between emotional states and treating behaviour that has, I think, a lot to do with arousal and the mode he's in. I follow Panskepp's brain modes and find that helps more and more the better I understand it. Anyway, if I do all of one and none of the other I usually end up with partial effectiveness. Getting the balance right isn't immediately obvious or easy to me, although it's not a huge deal to go "Oh, seems like this ain't working this morning" and tweak.

I haven't done it with my rabbit, because Erik barks at her and she's scared of him, even though she mostly ignores him. She doesn't like it when he barks. For me, it's not worth me putting her through some training with Erik at this point. When she's in her cage he leaves her alone. When she's out I have places I can put her where Erik can't get at her and he doesn't try. It just means she doesn't get to be a lap rabbit. I've tried a few things, but I'm missing something and haven't been happy with the results. I guess it's one of those "right mixture of emotion and learning" things. Maybe BAT is worth a go.

I did do some work with him with my parents' cats recently and to be honest I think his only interest in them is something exciting to chase. As soon as he was calm and they were calm there was nothing to treat. It's hard to work on it safely when the pivotal factor is arousal. It seems easier to just work on arousal in general. Anyway, his interest in my rabbit is totally different. She gets him aroused. The cats don't get him aroused, they just act as an outlet if he's already aroused. If that is the case, there are heaps of things I can do to give him a more acceptable outlet.

Edited January 9, 2011 by corvus

[Rottifan]

Every dog is different but here's some ideas. My rotti was anti cats until I adopted 2 that were found taped up in a box dumped in the gutter (how could I not!). I had taught my rotti the "leave" command with food. I'd put some food down on the arm of my chair after I told him to "sit". i started off with 1 or 2 seconds of having him stay away from the food and just watch it and saying "leave" "leave" and then "have" when I gave him the food. I then cemented the "leave" command over longer periods of time. Thats an easy one. I then started associating "leave" when he heard thunder and would wrinkle his head up and think about going nuts at the sky.....he settled down straight away, then I'd give him a treat and say good boy. I think by doing this I changed the meaning of "leave". When he is licking himself obsessively sometimes I say "leave", he stops. When I got the cats he would look at them and I would say "leave" and his gaze would be on me giving him a treat....and now he just accepts that they are there. I went for a long period of time not wanting to be too trusting and endanger the cats so I would lock the dog out and cat in if I wasnt there and now the dogs are most often inside whether i am there or not and the cats are free to come and go with their cat flap. The cats rub up against my rotti now and the only time I've seen him get upset is if, unbeknownst to them - they go near his toys.....I can even pick up the cats and take them to my rotti and say "give her a kiss" and he licks their face. It can be done but bit by bit - best of luck!