My fiance's dog Lola and my
cat Nicky will be living together soon. Lola's scared of the kitty,
and while they don't need to be best friends, they do need to
tolerate living in the same space as one another since neither is
going to be finding a new home. I've begun the process of rehabbing
their relationship, and I'm bringing you all along for the ride.
As the title implies, the
very first step in behavior modification is management. Management
is all the stuff we do to prevent a dog from doing things we don't
like. In Lola's case, I don't want her fixating on and barking at my
cat. There are three reasons management is so important that it's the
first thing I'm discussing.
The first, and most
important reason, is safety.
As much as we don't want to believe that our beloved pups could hurt
another animal, the truth is that the vast majority of the time, the
dogs in our lives are stronger than the cats. Something as simple as
over-zealous play could have fatal consequences. But even when your
pets are similar in size, kitties with claws can be mighty nasty...
and cat bites are nasty cesspools of germs.
Second,
we want to prevent rehearsal.
You know that saying, “Practice makes perfect”? Yeah, it's just
as true for dogs as it is for humans... and it includes both
desirable and undesirable behaviors. You don't want your dog to get
better at chasing your cat, and I don't want Lola to develop a habit
of barking at my kitty. Worse, by allowing your dog to continually
harass your cat (and vice versa, because let's be honest, cats can be
big jerks sometimes), you will undo all that hard work you're going
to be doing.
Finally, management allows
us to keep the dog under threshold. Keeping a dog under threshold keeps him in his rational, thinking
mind and prevents him from going off in an overly-emotional,
overreacting, irrational state. You can't train a dog who can't
learn, so we need to keep him under threshold.
So, how does one effectively
manage a dog/cat relationship? Well, as so much in dog training, it
depends. It depends on what your dog is doing, how severe it is, how
the cat is reacting, and what your living situation is. The bottom
line is that until your dog and cat are completely comfortable
together, you must either be actively working to improve their
relationship, or you must be preventing them from interacting. And
don't fool yourself: some dog/cat pairs may require management for
their entire lives. (Dear
g-d, I hope that's not Lola and Nicky.)
Here
are some management ideas. They may not all work for your given
situation, and I may not have listed every possible solution, but it
should be a good start.
Crates
are a time-honored way of keeping dogs out of trouble, and they are
definitely one method of management I've been using with Lola. The
downside of crates is that while they restrict the dog's movement,
they do nothing to stop the cat from coming right up to the bars and
taunting the dog. While everyone is safe, this doesn't prevent the
dog from practicing some undesirable behaviors or from going over
threshold.
Baby
gates
can be useful... depending on your cat. Since they can be pretty
agile, it's often no big deal for kitties to go right over a gate.
For that matter, there is no baby gate that my dog Pyg hasn't
defeated. Bottom line, I would not depend on baby gates to be the
sole form of management.
Better
than gates are closed
doors. Since
our furry friends do not have opposable thumbs, most of the time a
nice closed door is the best way to keep dogs and cats apart. Just
make those doors are firmly latched!
Leashes
can be used, either as a tie down to a heavy piece of furniture, or
as an umbilical to a person... but only when you're present. I would
honestly not trust a leash alone to protect everyone. Slipped
collars, chewed leashes, and stronger-than-expected dogs all leave
this as less-than-ideal when it comes to unattended pets.
Hopefully
this post has given you some ideas... and if so, I'd love to hear
them. There are some truly brilliant minds reading my blog, and we
all learn when you share!
1 comment:
Just as an idea...we used Susan Garrett's Crate Games to crate train our cat it made management so much easier because we could manage both ends of the relationship while we worked on training. Plus now if we ever have to evacuate in the middle of the night we know right where Feather is!
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