Hi Everyone,

This is my first post, but I've been reading all the threads for the past few months.

We have an 12 week old female husky puppy named Nymeria. So far things are going great! She seems extremely smart and is learning new things regularly.

There is one issue we are having trouble with and I was hoping I could get some advice.

Nymeria likes to chase after the cats any time she sees them.  We've told her no and tried occupying her with something else, but her main focus is still to chase after the cats.  The cats hiss and paw at her, but it doesn't stop her either.

Any advice on how to curb this behavior? Coexisting with the cats is very important to us since we have one older cat who can't really deal with being chased around.

Any advice/help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Does she chase only when they run or all the time? Do you have your house separated with cat only areas?

Your puppy may not know word no. Start training leave it asap and work into using on cats. I also have cat time where every time loki looks away from cat we would treat. Basically making him think cats is good thing but also look to me. This morning he tried chasing my cat and he stopped mid chase. This is after few months. We still have baby gate to upstairs for cats to go and make sure he can not run full speed. When we leave he is always crated. Based on my lab I suspect baby gate will be up at least until 18-24 months. Based on husky part, Loki may always be crated when I am not around just so I can supervise and make sure cats are safe.

He loves my bengal but I have to watch their interaction as I noticed when I let him interact a lot by licking her a lot (she licks him back), Loki became more interested in my cats.

I'd say its around 75% of the time. There are times when she will lay on the floor and ignore them, but if she seems them on the couch or walking around she most likely will chase.

We usually gate off part of the house and have a room we lock the older cat in if Nymeria is getting too wild. She is also crated when we're not around so she isnt unsupervised with the cats around.

We have started working with no and it works 30% of the time. I shout NO and she'll stop, but sometimes she just ignores it(same with other things we've taught her so far) and continues to do what she wants to do until we intervene.

We've also started using 'watch me' for when we want to get her attention back.

I'm not a fan of the word no for training. Think about how many times in regular life you say that word. How will your dog know you're talking to them? Your pup picks up on words they know. You can be chatting on the phone and say No poos dog is sitting nicely minding their own business thinking they've done wrong. Personally, I work with Leave It, or Quit It as a form of no. Either way, you need to correct the behavior and reward when they're coexisting peacefully. My husky looooooooved to chase my cats. We just worked on it steadily. Leave it, and reward when they do. wish I could just train my cats not to run while the dog is around hahaha but that is just not gonna happen. Just treat it like any other undesired behavior. Correct and reward.

I like leave it too. Even in my signature pic you can see leash on loki. It takes some time. Now though he can go upstairs jump on bed and ignore 2 cats laying on it. He still chases occassionally but easier to handle with leave it.

I would definitely use clicker training with cats too for puppy fixating on cats not moving. So every time she looks away from cats click and treat. It helps break fixation. If she fixates it can mean any little movements will set off chase. Keep her leashed while doing at first. It can be easier with 2 people. I did this a few times a day for a few minutes each time. It seemed to help him not watch the cats.

For a few weeks maybe use drag line on her so you can stop her from going after cats. Chasing is self rewarding so the more she does it the harder it is to break.

My 2 cats are dog saavy though and tend to walk slow or hold their ground. This makes it easier as it is much harder if the cat runs a lot

Okay, so I have 2 cats and my pup and we live in a pretty small studio apartment, so ours have to coexist somewhat peacefully, or at least grudgingly ignore eachother.

I agree that you need to teach your puppy what no means. I use 'ah ah' or 'quit it.' For awhile I'm pretty sure he thought 'ah ah' meant he got a treat. I would say that, and if he stopped or looked at me, I'd mark it and give him a treat. So essentially, the correction resulted in a reward if he stopped the behavior.

Once he understood the correction word, he got corrected if he even looked at/toward the cats and rewarded if he did look away. If he moved towards them, or started harassing them, he went into timeout. He used to stand a couple feet from our smaller cat, Martini, and woo at her. It pissed her off to no end. When he was about 12 weeks old, I let him get close enough to her to get swiped. She got him pretty good and now when she hisses he usually walks away. Our larger cat, Miles, is pretty aggressive and I didn't let Dizzy get near him until he was about 5 months old or so. When I did, Miles really got him, and slashed his nose, Diz had a scar for a few weeks from that. He totally steers clear of Miles now. The biggest thing for him has been breaking/stopping fixation, which starts with Dizzy looking at the cats

He is still dying of curiosity about both cats and tries to approach Martini sometimes and I only started letting him do so recently, and only if he is calm about it. This morning he did a really cute and gentle play bow/pouce a foot away from her while wagging his tail. I corrected him for it, but it was so sweet. I think those two will be friends eventually, but I would never leave them out together unsupervised. The only time I tried, they were out for maybe 2 min (ran the trash out) and Dizzy had Martini hiding in a closet and he was outside wooing.

Firstly, I LOVE your dog's name. That was my choice if we had've gotten a female.

Our cat has zero tolerance for Jasper ever since the day we brought him home, to the point where the dog can't walk past him without getting hissed at or swatted. This surprisingly helped since Jasper knows if he looks at Tri he'll get a swat (our cats declawed so no worries there). We lived in an apartment so no chance of seperating them easily. I agree with everyone above, teach her a specific command such as stop it and treat as soon as she diverts attention. Also time outs worked great for Jasper, whenever he showed a little bit too much interest we would make him lie on his bed until he calmed.

Knowing the prey drive of huskies we've tried to stay on top of thissince day one and it seems to be working, the only physical contact by Jasper was when he licked Tri up the side of his head and I don't consider that agression, more play although the cat was NOT impressed lol. All this being said, I would never trust them alone together and Jasper is always crated when we're not home, I wouldn't stop worrying if we didn't.

I'm going through the same thing. I have Chuck pinned in the dining area (3 walls and metal fence) and then the cats are free to roam and approach him safely. I let him out to roam the house in the evening, and the cats are getting more and more brave. I still leave the leash on on him so I can grab it and yank if he chases. He's chasing less and less. He gets the most serious correction I give him for chasing, and immediately goes back into the pen.

I'm almost completely positive in the training I try with Chuck (just ignoring and ending play time with nipping has been super effective, but that's for another thread) but chasing the cats is a big exception to that. I want him to know it's unpleasant and scary when he does that. He bounces back after being a little scared and depressed in those instances, and chases them less.

Sometimes he'll go up and sniff the braver of the two cats, and he doesn't run anymore, or if he's annoyed he'll usually just casually leave. The girl cat is the bigger challenge so far, she's just pathetically timid though.

Overall I do think it's working.

I've had this issue with Orion as well however the hardest thing to break him of was sitting on the cat... he would prance up to the kitty sleeping on the floor then just plonk down on top of him and sit there it was absurd. In the end the cat solved that one for us, the cat Ted is a british shorthair and massive - well one day he obviously had enough of Orion so he pined him down (yes the cat can pin the dog) and sat on Orions head. Orion lay there with the most pathetic look on his face and Ted quite smugly cleaned his paws then hopped down and wandered off, it was priceless and Orion has never sat on Ted since.

We worked on both "leave it" for the chasing and "gentle" for mouthing both of which worked well. It does take a lot of time though and occasionally Ted will chase and instigate play fights with Orion which of course can't be helped. Orion is clicker trained which definitely helped with marking good behavior when it came to the cat since he instantly recognized the click as meaning he was doing the right thing. We do have a baby gated area where the cat can just chill without being pestered and the cat has a big climbing tower he can get to the top of for some peace if he wishes although they hardly bother each other anymore

I use leave it, and reward with a treat after they come to me. If I even see them looking toward the cat when they're about to move, I say leave it.

Our oldest cat, Embry is the only one who ever chases him, but they were both raised together as puppy and kitten and Embry is sooo gentle with him and they used to play all the time, so I don't really worry about that one too much.

We did get a kitten a few months ago, and Ares will NOT stop chasing him. Luckily the kitten is really fast, and runs right under the bed when Ares starts up, and we're in the process of breaking that because I know one day he's gonna end up squishing him.

I need to get back to using the clicker on things Chuck is struggling with. Also, high value treats. Lately he thinks a lot of things are worth more than kibble, which previously, he would do anything for...good thread.

I thought my kitty training was not doing to well until another baby opposum showed up in the back yard and he came to me when I said leave it and come. At least he is getting better with his commands. I think it just takes awhile. Loki is good probably 80-90% of the day. It is in his hyper state of mind for about 1 hour in morning and 1 hour at night that I notice he will chase them. At this time though, he is usually trying to get my dogs to play with him too. After his walks he will act like a goof too for about 15-30 minutes. My cat Bindi does seem play with him though. She likes to be about at his nose level though to sniff and play instead of on the floor. My other cat tends to stay up high or behind things when he is acting like goofball.

My husky Parker used to love to chase our cat to play with her but my wife and I started putting him in time out whenever he started doing it and it worked pretty good. Now they are best friends, he doesn't chase her anymore and the cat has one of those cat towers to escape to when she is uncomfortable

We use uh uh with our dogs. We have two cats that don't really like the dogs but things have been getting a lot better. The dogs just want to smell them and play with them but of course the cats aren't interested. I think you just need to make other things more fun than chasing the cat. Koga still chases the cats when they get close to his bowl. But other than that they are just fine with them. It will just take time.