We encounter live prey every single day, unfortunately I've had the pleasure of encountering dead prey as well, and he's caught and killed two squirrels. Here is what we encounter daily: squirrels, rats, mice, raccoons, pigeons (walk a husky through a flock of pigeons while the neighborhood crazy is feeding them bagels and you'll see the drive), and many species of wild birds. What we have encountered in the city, but not frequently: owl, snakes, skunks, foxes, rabbits, feral cats. Also keep in mind that I also frequently leave the city and take Dizzy on many adventures, the less settled the better.

The reason I continued the discussion of drive (that you brought up) was your assertion that a dog could not kill a cat. That IS a dangerous and factually incorrect statement, hence my insistence that drive is a fundamental part of a dog and protecting the other household animals through training and socialization is necessary.

MiyasMomma wrote:

Jen, imho, the chase and kill with Dizzy and friend is because of the pack mentality, I know the training you have done, if it was Dizzy by himself I'm pretty confident you would have been able to call him off.

That is incorrect. He has killed a squirrel on his own.

Oh I'm sorry, I clearly bow down to your superior training skills.


I'm done today.

You were not able to call him off with the e-collar then to? Every dog has different degree of drive, this is true. at 6 months of age Miya was around a baby duck, she sniffed and pawed and in a blink of an eye beak, feathers, feet were completely consumed. She has never showed an inclination of killing and eating after that day. I will maintain that the squirrel was chased prior to attack and kill. You have dumb squirrels in NYC, lol, 99% of them here climb up a tree, and yes Miya will circle it, and she will go play with me and then go back to the tree. I'll take her in and when we go back out she'll go back to the tree it went up. I also seen her chase a squirrel around our house and back up the tree. I too slammed on my panic button, because she was going toward the highway, I was on the phone so my recall would have been yelled at the person I was talking too and not to her. This happened incredibly fast. My heart sank, I feared that the squirrel would lead her across the road, but nope, in a matter of seconds she came from the other side of the house in hot pursuit of squirrel and up the tree it went.

And please Kelly I did not say I have superior training skills, I was merely saying what works for me may work for someone else, my apologies, if that came off wrong.

Kelly, I'm with you, I give up.

Going back to the original topic, as you've seen prey drive is displayed in many different ways. Which is where I think the thread was almost completely sidetracked. Our dogs, Husky's in general, are unique; each of them is unique.

How each dog responds to a cat is different, some could care less while to others they're the ultimate prey. Introducing an older cat to a younger Husky is normally safe because the cat has 20 ways to put puppy in his place. Introducing an older Husky to a cat is nerve wracking at best. Of my mothers two cats one tolerated one of my dogs, the other cat wanted nothing to do with them. One of my Husky's (Sasha, who I'd least expect to be accepting) accepted her cats without a problem; my "perpetual teenager" just thought they were things to chase.

Whatever you do, do it very carefully and be very aware of how the dog is reacting ...

Jen, I also said socialize and train, to hope that your dog will not kill your cat. I will say that a socialized, trained dog should not kill it's household animals, be it cat or whatever, and that's why I mentioned my first husky, she was not necessarily trained in leaving our cats alone, but she did, and she knew that a feral cat was not ours and did kill them. I never said a dog could not kill a cat, however, in the cat's defense, a cat can climb a tree or become higher up than a dog, I know my dog can not climb a tree, and a cat can certainly out run a dog. But I do not recall ever saying no dog will kill a cat statement, I did preface that through training and socialization that a dog should not kill a cat.

Yikes, this thread has kind of rabbit trailed lol. Going back to the original post, thanks so much for everyone's advice. We are going to cautiously introduce them tonight. I'll report back later!

Jen I did not exactly say no dog will kill a cat, and I did put the lol, on there, please reread what you copied. I mentioned prior to what you copied on training and socializing, it was somewhat tongue in cheek with my comment hence the lol, but I did not say anywhere at all that "No dog will kill a cat" statement.

MiyasMomma wrote:

and a cat can certainly out run a dog. But I do not recall ever saying no dog will kill a cat statement, I did preface that through training and socialization that a dog should not kill a cat.

Both Ami and Archer can seriously outrun our cat. And, respectfully, "should not" is different than "would not". My previous husky DID.

We had the first introduction tonight. Gaia barked once at Stormy, who hissed and backed away. Gaia was struggling against her leash pretty hard, but we managed to calm her to the point that she was able to do her obedience training with us. Both cats hid under a chair at first, but then came out and watched warily from a distance. Gaia is learning fast, and within about 5 minutes she picked up "look". (We point to our eyes and say "look" when we want her to focus on us). She was able to hold our gaze for longer and longer each time. We'll see if she remembers it tomorrow. So far, she has successfully learned "sit" "nose" (she touches her nose to our hand, another technique I have heard is used to gain her attention), and "look". She shows progress with "leave it" and "drop it" but isn't consistent with obeying them yet.

We decided to separate the animals again tonight just because we want a chance to monitor them this weekend when we're home all day. We aren't confident enough in her attention span to let her off the leash just yet since we're worried she might try to chase the cats.

Tomorrow night and this weekend we will probably try having them around each other permanently. I think it went pretty well so far, she showed definite interest in the cats, but we were successfully able to distract her with obedience training since the cats were hanging back and watching from the shadows. I'm fairly confident that with enough training and careful monitoring, they will be able to at least tolerate each other. Thanks all for the advice!

That's great! Congrats on the first success! Keep at it and you'll have peace in the household.

Aww, what a great picture! They're all so pretty! Looks like they are all pretty well behaved. Did it take you long to teach Dizzy to leave them alone?

Gaia was behaving a lot better today; before we had introduced her to the cats last night she had been throwing tantrums while we were trying to take her out to use the bathroom. She kept flinging herself to the ground and hiding her nose in the grass and refusing to move, then when we gently pulled on the leash she would roll over on her back and start chewing on the leash. We reprimanded her, and when that didn't work after several tries, we put her in timeout for about 10 minutes, then took her back out and she was behaving almost perfectly. This morning she successfully did sit, nose, and look before I fed her, and she's learning that when I open doors, she needs to sit, and wait for me to call her before she can go through them. It's absolutely mind-blowing how quickly she is learning things considering we've only had her since Sunday.

Ha ha, sounds like she's trying to play with those little tantrums. They are such goofballs sometimes. Timeout is amazingly helpful, and got me through some really obnoxious tantrums with Diz. I once had to time him to a streetlight and walk away for 5 minutes....

It didn't take Dizzy long to learn the house rules regarding the cats, I'd say maybe a month, but he was younger, and he learned much more quickly when he was Gaia's age. He was just sort of nutty when I brought him home at 9 weeks, like a little wild jackal or something! He learned pretty quickly, but he tested for a long time. He also still tests every once in a while, but I now allow him to approach because I know if they hiss, he will walk away, or if they run, he won't chase, and just looks sad his overture of friendship didn't work, he also never makes direct eye contact.

Here's a video of him last winter (during the superbowl). It's hard to see, but Martini (cat) is on the arm of the couch next to me. He want's to approach, but he can tell she's uncomfortable, so he's wooing at her. He does this when he wants to be friends... It's not something i normally allow, but i wanted to get a video of his low wooing sound.

Aww haha. He looks so distraught, like "Why? I just want to play with you..."

I guess we'll just have to take one day at a time until Gaia learns that the cats are none of her business lol. Thanks so much for the input.

Looks like you have a good handle on training Gaia - good luck with the cats and the "wolf".

I wish I could get Ami and PC to tolerate each other. First time he saw her, Pussy Cat tried her usual "sit and taunt" with dogs. Ami, on the other hand did the mother lunge of all lunges, gave my shoulder something to think about for days and PC, thinking better of her actions, headed to the nearest tree to contemplate the "wolf in the backyard" and the new order of things. At best, a year later, she will warily sit as I make Ami sit on leash and break his stare with my hand waving in front of his face. I have little hope that she will ever be safe if he's loose. Fortunately, his tags jingle so she has warning he's around and there are ample trees always close by. She's lived this long outside by knowing how to make herself scarce. We will see but I am not hopeful.

Yeah he'd really like to be friends with martini, he's just a bit too big and intimidating. He's calmed down a lot in the last month or so (I'm hoping this phase sticks around a while) and who knows, maybe they will end up cuddle buddies

wpskier222 wrote:

If he didn't listen he got a time out.

Hi Jen,

I know this is not my original thread, but this is such great advice. We also have several cats. Once I learned of the high prey drive of the Siberian, I decided it would be best to get a puppy to raise as a part of our pack, cats and all.

I'm just curious what form of time out you would utilize? I have heard not to use the crate for this purpose, so I'm wondering what you suggest?

Well honestly, we have such a small apartment (the downside of nyc), so I used his crate. I haven't seen any adverse reaction. He still enjoys his crate and goes in there on his own. I never really considered it a punishment, I looked at it more as chill time, generally a time out was needed if he got too excited or too fixated. I would put him in the crate with something to chew and a lot of times he would be asleep within 5 minutes. along with that, I always made sure to spend time making the crate a happy experience. Even the timeouts were a positive experience for him, it was removing him from an over stimulating situation and letting him rest.

Thanks, Jen. That makes sense. I was imagining putting her in the laundry room and having her eat or clothes off the dryer, lol. I think as long as she is put in timeout with a positive attitude and not a "bad girl" kind of way, it will work out fine.

I'm actually looking forward to seeing how she still react to the cats. I'll have to keep in mind that she is not a lab and will be mindful of any "eyeing" behavior, so we can nip that in the bud.

I'm curious how things are going this weekend for the OP? :-)

Please excuse my typos. I'm posting from my very tiny phone keyboard.

Hi! My 2 cats are 3yrs and 2yrs my sibe Ida is 19wks. Noom my older cat is more an outdoor moggy whilst Lunar likes his home comforts. Both put Ida in her place when she approaches them inquisitively, wanting to play...she backs off but not away unless I tell her NO then take her attention to something else.
Noom took a couple of weeks to feel comfortable coming home and inside and tends to head upstairs after eating out of the way of both Ida and Lunar.
Noom has grasped keep calm or distant.
Lunar on the other hand hangs around in the kitchen as he is very food orientated and a bully.  
This tends to mean he is moving around the kitchen if I am, whether Im cooking or not, as he thinks he might be missing out on food!! Subsequently attracting Idas attention.
Lunar is so focused on food...well fed as he is...that any sense of survival he has goes out of the window until he finds himself in the position of being the focus of an excited husky pup. Lunar has found himself on the kitchen floor twice now having been pulled from the counter top by Ida grabbing his flank and pulling him down forcing Lunar to defend himself, naturally, though Ida shows no sign of wanting to "kill". This obviously is not what I want to be happening. When Lunar decides to chill, either on a chair under the table or the cat basket situated at the back of a counter top Ida is not interested. If Ida moves whilst Lunar is chilling, mainly if he's on the chair, he will growl or hiss even though Ida is not looking or moving in his direction thus attracting attention to himself, Ida then reacts to that and looks to play! Lunar just seems to do the opposite of what you would expect to keep himself from harm. I would like to point out Lunar was oxygen deprived at birth and born with a flat chest as he was breech and it looks as though he is not maturing mentally. I love him dearly but it's causing very stressful situations and I'm unable to relax whilst both are in the house.
I'm wondering if it's worth persevering in the co-habiting training or for the sake of both in question re-home my cat?

Ida, if staff are around you might want to ask to have your message split off into a separate thread. This one's long already and, I think, you'll get response in another thread.

Since Ida is a pup, it MAY, and I emphasize may, be possible to train her to leave the cat alone. You might want to look into an ecollar to help with this or leave a leash on her when she's in the kitchen and consistently tell her "no" as he approaches kitty.

Jen has excellent suggestions previously in this post.

For what it's worth, my son has a now 8 month old husky mix. They have 2 cats also. One who prefers to be scarce when Archer is around and another who plays with him. (Note: I have warned son and DIL on multiple occasions that this might, emphasis on might, be a mistake. I fear that one day Archer's play may get too rough for kitty cat.) Josh has admitted he gets a bit nervous when Archer has Tony's whole head in his mouth, but Tony has not seemed worried and it's always play.)

On the other hand, I had a grown husky girl, Sasha, and got a younger cat. Long story short, dog killed cat - accidentally, I believe, as in attempting to play. She was always pouncing on small critters(field mice, etc), tossing them in the air and disappointed when the came down dead

I would go with your gut on this one...