Sometimes a big fat hairy scary NOOO don't you flaming well DARE!!!!!! is needed. And I mean business. Pup needs to learn it is just absolutely unacceptable to mither the cats. Say it in the voice you'd use if she was about to crash through the crown jewels!!!! Then, when she stops to think 'what was that about?!' you get your happy clappy good cop voice on and praise her for inadvertently not chasing.
I was going to say much the same. If caught in the act, then tell her off in a way she isn't going to forget in a hurry. I'd then counter that with always rewarding/praising the dogs for stopping whatever she is doing when asked, the very moment she stops, so she knows that is the RIGHT behaviour....Good Cop/Bad Cop stylee... This seems to work well for me.
My dogs probably think I have a multiple personality disorder , but at least it keeps them on their toes and is a far more natural way for a dog to understand.
As Sam has suggested, work on LEAVE too. Not only with food, but with balls rolled and toys thrown. She has to learn she just can't chase anything as and when SHE wishes, she can only do it with your permission.
Try not to compare her to your other dog, as all dogs are different and some are much more excited by movement than others. Just deal with what you've got. And as for Time Outs, I can't ever work out how they are supposed to work. A dog simply hasn't the ability to sit and think about it's behaviour and then vow not to do it again, as a human would do. All Time Outs do is allow the adrenaline to drop, so the dog calms down (or gets bored).
I must admit I only use the time out when my dog needs to calm down a little but its rare nowadays.
George used to chase our timid cat who now 7 months on will stand up to him turn round and hiss if he chases. As long as your cats have a escape route their confidence will eventually come back. George would only chase the cat if he ran, otherwise he isn't too bothered and most of the time just wants a sniff. We tried the NO leave it command, but I think my voice was a bit whimpy and he didn't really understand leave it at the time. I also left it too late, because by the time he was running after the cat he couldn't hear me anymore, and I had to block him off from getting to the cat. What we found worked was getting George to watch us with a smelly liver treat while the cat escaped. We also found shifting his attention onto us before he chased helped massively as you could still easily get his attention. Eventually he learned that we are far more interesting than the cat.
You have to watch them like a hawk to begin with but if you get her early on after a few seconds stare you can prevent it rather than try and deal with the fallout.
Good luck. Whatever you do it will take a while to resolve so don't worry if you don't see immediate results.
____________ Gemma, Lee and our lovely little George
BUT..... my bother in law uses time outs for his dog and they seem to work a treat?
I think they often LOOK like they work when they are used for over excited behaviours. If a youngster gets carried away, especially when it's tired, as often they do, then popping the dog in it's crate or shutting it in the kitchen, removes all stimlus and allows the dog's adrenaline levels to drop. So when the dog comes back out, it is calmer and looks for all the world like it has learnt to behave.....That is until next time it gets over excited . I will quite happily pop a fractious, bitey, over excited pup in it's crate and leave it there for a while. That to me isn't teaching the dog anything, as the dog hasn't actually sat and thought about it's actions, the consequences and learnt it shouldn't do it again. It has just managed the situation.
When you look at how dogs discipline/instil rules in each other, it is a very swift and instant physical/verbal correction and then it's instantly forgotten about and back to normal. So I try to emulate how they do it, as the dogs are already programmed to understand this. I just add the extra praise and reward for good behaviour, as most dogs like to know when they are doing something right, so I encourage that as much as possible.
that all makes sense and i agree entirely, i just popped the bit in about the brother in law as a point of reference, i think positive rewards and the odd verbal correction works well.
Firstly thank you all for your comments, they have been most helpful. Now I'll try to respond to some of the comments so excuse me for all the replies I am about to do (shame this forum doesn't have a multi quote where I can select the posts I want to quote and then reply all in one post!)
_Sam_ wrote:
Does she know a leave it command? I would teach a leave command and then if she looks like she's going to start harassing them, tell her to leave and call her over for her tasty food reward. She will hopefully learn that goes things come out f your pockets if she leaves the cats alone
Yes she is learning this command at the moment and has been the past few weeks, we have been doing it with food and toys and so on. She has already worked out that my husbands pockets contain treats, such a clever girly!
As for your tip, this seems to be working very well compared to the method we were using. Its like she understands more and it just seems to be working much better so thank you. We are basically telling her to leave it and then calling her over for a reward if she does. Hopefully it will do the trick!
Thank you.
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Click on www button for Myka´s website. Myka is a much loved family member and we hope to train her to become my assistance dog too!
My stair gate is at the bottom of the stairs, the cats have the choice as to whether to come into the living room or not, they do come in now, a lot more, they wouldn`t when Cindy was here cos she was worse than CJ for chasing.
As long as they have an escape route they should be fine, the more timid ones you`ll need to help if they freeze, give it time Myka will get better as time progresses,
We do have a stair gate between our lounge/kitchen which leads onto the hallway. This does give the cats an escape route and they also do have some levels they can go to within the lounge/kitchen.
I just wanted to respond really and say sadly giving an escape route isn't enough. We have done this from the start and with the problems we were having it wasn't enough. We have 6 cats in total, all with different characters and they are not fine if just given an escape route. They don't all use it and secondly they should have as much right to their home as she does. Hope I am making sense.
Also because of our situation we can't always go help the cat that freezes. I am severely disabled you see and can't walk, when I am in the lounge/kitchen and it happens I can't save the cat who has frozen to the spot. My husband isn't always able to help. Which is why we wanted a command that we could use when this happens and also to try and deter this behavior. Hope that makes sense and thanks for your advice.
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Click on www button for Myka´s website. Myka is a much loved family member and we hope to train her to become my assistance dog too!
Are you doing things like throwing balls for her to play with? If you're out for a walk, will she sit to let a cyclist, jogger etc whizz past without moving? If not, I'd work away at this sort of thing too, not just the cat chasing in isolation. She's discovered that leaping after something that moves is great fun, but you can teach her that staying still is also great, using a seriously high value treat.
With my first pup I let the cat in but held pup's attention with cheese. If she 'watched me' and not the cat, she got the cheese. I used to roll balls past her, make her sit/stay for cyclists etc etc and reward to the max when she ignored the distraction.
Sometimes a big fat hairy scary NOOO don't you flaming well DARE!!!!!! is needed. And I mean business. Pup needs to learn it is just absolutely unacceptable to mither the cats. Say it in the voice you'd use if she was about to crash through the crown jewels!!!! Then, when she stops to think 'what was that about?!' you get your happy clappy good cop voice on and praise her for inadvertently not chasing.
I know exactly how you feel I think. When one of mine was a youngster she did injure my cat by pouncing on him and playing too rough. He's a canny thing and probably just froze. A combination of really working on teaching 'leave it' plus getting that bit firmer with her really helped. My bad cop voice was a bit too wishy washy back then I think. She and my two cats are firm friends now. They're curled up together sleeping right now. Keep going, you'll get there
Thank you, your reply was really helpful and also gave us hope.
You asked if we are doing things like throwing balls for her to play with? the answer is yes we are. She especially loves to do this outside withy more space. We also have toys for inside the hope that we can play with to give her interaction and stimulation. We have recently bought a buster cube which is an interactive toy that gives out treats, she loves this.
You also asked how she was when she was out and saw a cylclist go by, joggers etc. She would love to just run after them and chase them, my husband is currently working hard on this to get her to sit still and/or ignore when these things happen.
We totally agree that at times a big scary NO is needed and is what we have been doing when she is especially bad/putting the cats in a lot of danger. When she responds like you say then we give her praise and love. Good cop/bad cope you could say because like you we feel its unacceptable to harass the cats like this.
I am sorry to hear your cat got hurt must of been awful for you. I know how you feel and its not a nice feeling at all. We are now working hard on the leave it command and treating when she does. This really seems to be working so is a matter of time and hopefully we'll get there.
Thanks again.
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Click on www button for Myka´s website. Myka is a much loved family member and we hope to train her to become my assistance dog too!
Sometimes a big fat hairy scary NOOO don't you flaming well DARE!!!!!! is needed. And I mean business. Pup needs to learn it is just absolutely unacceptable to mither the cats. Say it in the voice you'd use if she was about to crash through the crown jewels!!!! Then, when she stops to think 'what was that about?!' you get your happy clappy good cop voice on and praise her for inadvertently not chasing.
I was going to say much the same. If caught in the act, then tell her off in a way she isn't going to forget in a hurry. I'd then counter that with always rewarding/praising the dogs for stopping whatever she is doing when asked, the very moment she stops, so she knows that is the RIGHT behaviour....Good Cop/Bad Cop stylee... This seems to work well for me.
My dogs probably think I have a multiple personality disorder , but at least it keeps them on their toes and is a far more natural way for a dog to understand.
As Sam has suggested, work on LEAVE too. Not only with food, but with balls rolled and toys thrown. She has to learn she just can't chase anything as and when SHE wishes, she can only do it with your permission.
Try not to compare her to your other dog, as all dogs are different and some are much more excited by movement than others. Just deal with what you've got. And as for Time Outs, I can't ever work out how they are supposed to work. A dog simply hasn't the ability to sit and think about it's behaviour and then vow not to do it again, as a human would do. All Time Outs do is allow the adrenaline to drop, so the dog calms down (or gets bored).
Thank you. We are doing the good cop/bad cop routine so hopefully she will start to learn from this. We are also working on the leave it command and this seems to be working well with the cats. We were already working on this command the last few weeks so she knew what it meant which helps, we have been doing it with food, toys and so on. So hopefully the more we use this command the more success we will get, we treat when she does as we ask (leave it).
As for comparing to our other dog, that was purely in my post as additional information. Letting readers know that although we have another dog we have never had this problem. Since having Myka we are soon realising all dogs are different.
In regards to the time outs, this is normally used when he behavior is very bad. It was what our dog trainer suggested we do and we do find it helps. Myka tends to pick up most things very quickly and we have found this trick hugely helpful. She isn't in time out for long and its more to calm down if anything, then we bring her back in. If she starts it again we repeat and she tends to quickly understand she needs to calm down/stop what she is doing. Don't know the reasons behind why it works but it does.
Re time outs again we have used it for other things and ended up having success, we have had quite a few problems with Myka including jumping up at people and even going for their face . We found time outs worked well in this situation even if we did have to repeat several times. Its like she understood what behavior we expected of her. Again suggested by our dog trainer and time outs were only short. Other techniques we used for this problem was also turning our back and ignoring her. This worked sometimes but not all times. Anyway we're not really talking about jumping up etc but just wanted to say we seem to get success with it most times depending on what its used for. We try not to use that method too often though and only when really needed.
Thanks again and hope this explains a few things .
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Click on www button for Myka´s website. Myka is a much loved family member and we hope to train her to become my assistance dog too!
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, but at least it keeps them on their toes and is a far more natural way for a dog to understand.
must of been awful for you. I know how you feel and its not a nice feeling at all. We are now working hard on the leave it command and treating when she does. This really seems to be working so is a matter of time and hopefully we'll get there.
