Tuesday, 19 February 2019

Our dog has a high prey-drive. Can she ever get along with a kitten?

We are planning to adopt a 3-month old kitten who was fostered in a home with 3 shiba dogs and is completely comfortable around dogs. Our dog, Sunny, is a 5-yr-old mutt: mostly vizsla, lab, and pitbull. She is a good dog but she can get overly excited when she sees other dogs or animals. We've had her for three years and have not had other pets in that time (except for a fish).
We introduced Sunny to the kitten briefly a few days ago, and it was tense. Sunny had to be kept on a tight leash the whole time, and she was obsessed with the kitten. She is usually very food-motivated, but we couldn't even get her to look away from the kitten for a treat. I held the kitten (who was completely calm and so chill the whole time), and we let Sunny get fairly close, but she actually snapped at the kitten once so we had to pull her back again. When the kitten was safe in her carrier, we allowed Sunny to get closer and then she would stand really close to it, stare at the kitten, and wag her tail like she wanted to play (or like she wanted to attack a squirrel?).
Her body language was alternating between wagging her tail excitedly when the kitten was in the carrier, to drooling with pupils dilated whenever the kitten was out for her to see---the way she would look at a toy that she'd really like to bite into and shake around.
I have heard that some new pets take weeks or months to get used to each other. We can easily keep the kitten comfortably separated from the dog for as long as we need to, especially when we're not home, but we'd like to eventually let them hang out together. My question is, does that introduction sound bad to you? She is mostly a good dog but she's got some intense hunting instincts and I'm wondering if it might always be in her nature to want to kill the cat. I'm especially concerned that she was so obsessed with the cat that she could not even be distracted with a treat, which is what we normally use to train her. Is it possible she'll never calm down around the cat? Or can she be trained on this? Any tips or success stories?

submitted by /u/molseed
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/asf1oq/our_dog_has_a_high_preydrive_can_she_ever_get/

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