We live on a farm and we have two outdoor farm cats.

We were blessed with a very well behaved husky puppy. He is 5 months old and we got him about a month ago.
He knows, sit, stay, come, give me paw, lay down and is completed crate trained. Even when we go on our walks he is pretty well behaved, very little pulling. Even when we are in town and its very busy he doesn't really approach other dogs or people excitedly. He has been pretty simple to train thus far!

However one of the main issues we are having is that everytime he see's one of the cats he goes nuts. He doesn't bark, but he lunges, pulls and nearly chokes himself out trying to get to these cats. No matter what we do we can't redirect his attention or get him to listen to us and even if we somehow manage to get him walking again, the cats just end up following us and teasing him! It's really frustrating because as soon as he sees the cats, he doesn't focus on anything else, and we just want him to go potty.

Does anyone have an recommendations on how we can fix this?

I know huskies have a very high prey drive, and that its not easy to fix.

You can attempt to desensitize him to them with high value treats. Something smelly like liver that is hard for him to ignore. Draw his attention and treat for calm and focus on you. It will take time. When I got my latest boy he wanted to chase the neighbor's horses so bad he would cry and bark and throw a complete tantrum when we would walk by. I would basically drag him and repeat the mantra 'on by' or 'leave it' and when we would get past I would praise or treat. The horses would follow us from one end of the pasture to the other so it was quite the spectacle I'm sure. He got the hint after a couple months and completely lost interest because he knew I wasn't going to let him have his way. Don't try to shew the cats away or it will make him only think that chasing them is appropriate. I would ignore the cats and urge him to do so. It may take a while but they should eventually become part of the scenery.

Jenn - that image! That was Ami, initially, every time we saw another dog. He wanted to play so bad - hence my campaign for a second dog. I was sending Josh pics of dogs on petfinder and rescue me almost daily and Ta Da!!! Archer.

HuskyPupper - your boy is still a baby. Keep up the "on by" and be very very consistent. A few months down the road he will ultimately get the message.

Huskypupper, my comment is going to be a lot different from the others. If the cats don't immediately run from him, I'd let them get close enough so they can "see" (sniff) each other. I have two indoor/outdoor cats and my pups will "chase" them but it's nothing serious.

My reasoning for letting them get close enough to each other is that if the cat is intimidated by the pup they can convince the pup to back off - in fact they have two ways of telling the pup to back off. If the cats run then that's an invitation for the pup to chase, but since he's still a puppy (though probably bigger than the cats) a good slap by the cat should convince him to leave them alone. Obviously you don't want to let them get close enough that he can grab one - but close enough that the cat will act if it's so inclined.

I have two cats and a 3 month old husky puppy. I agree with aljones about giving the cats a chance to defend themselves. One of my cats is a total jerk and hates the puppy but is still super curious about him, so he'll get close and sniff but when the puppy lunges or tries to chew/bite him he starts smacking the puppy's face, my other cat Oliver does not react that way. The puppy has learned to leave the black, jerk cat alone in order to chase the orange cat. The black cat taught Okami (our puppy) to leave him alone without any help from us and it has proven to be more successful than our attempts to teach Okami to leave the orange cat alone.

I too would let the pup meet the cats. Getting a nice swat from them will teach him some respect and being able to investigate them will help ease his curiosity.

You still want to be able to redirect his attention when necessary so the other leave it training is essential too but I would safely (on lead) allow him to meet and interact with the cats and immediately correct any inappropriate behavior that may arise.