Cats and puppies

🌟 Sometimes important training doesn’t look like training at all. 🌟

Like a lot of working breed dogs, my puppy Halo has some decent chase drive. Compared to other puppies I’ve raised she’s actually pretty easy to have around if she’s appropriately fulfilled, but the one thing we do have to be mindful of is her behaviour around the two scaredy cats that share our home. If she chases, they will run - a super fun game for one party, and not so much fun for the other.

Cat-dog issues are pretty classic, and something that us trainers see a lot. Usually the situation involves a dog who has been born with a certain set of genetics, who has then been allowed to hone these natural behaviours with lots of practice and then we get an adolescent or adult dog with the potential to do some decent damage and a quick solution needing to be reached. It’s not fun for anyone at that point.

Knowing this, it would be really easy for us to panic with our own puppies and come up with an elaborate training plan to teach this puppy that cats mean good things (treats) the second we see this stuff. Or on the other hand, add a really big punishment to have her believe that cats bite back. Neither of them are bad options in the right context.

But in a puppy, often the best start is just aiming for neutrality through habituation and creating a clear picture of what their world & behaviour should look like. And that’s what we’re doing a whole bunch of which looks like… well, not much. Simply ✨existing✨ in the same space, creating neutral feelings. This cat is irrelevant, neither good nor bad, just there as bloody boring part of our world.

In addition to this:

✅ Puppy isn’t allowed free access to chase them, being on a line or otherwise contained away from them if I’m not directly supervising - setting her up for success by preventing her from practicing the unwanted behaviour unchecked and finding joy in it that I have to undo later or causing undue stress to the scaredy cats (whose welfare also matters).

✅ We work on impulse control and listening around distractions using play and good old fashioned obedience training. If you can listen around toys and food etc, it’s not as big a leap to listening in those higher arousal states.

✅ She is corrected (not nagged) appropriately if by chance she does get a bit wound up around them. Much easier to correct things now than way down the track when she’s built up a lot of value in the behaviour.

✅ And she will likely have some formal avoidance training around other prey animals as she gets older in preparation for many big adventures.

But for the most part, we just spend time ✨existing✨ together - creating the picture we want to see, with the feelings and habits we want her to have. Never underestimate the value of actively doing nothing.