In our apartment, I blocked off the hallway that leads to the bedroom doors so Luna can't get to our rooms and poop/pee there because she is not yet fully potty trained. My roommate has a cat that stays in her room mostly, but comes out into the hallway and sometimes jumps over the baby gate to explore or tease Luna. Well they seem to get along pretty well since the cat doesn't hiss at Luna, and when he play swats at her he never uses his claws. Luna goes crazy and chases the cat around the house - she even paws him and sometimes jumps on him but she never bites or hurts him. For now, it's tolerable since she is a puppy, but I'm afraid when she is bigger it might be a problem. Also I just feel bad that the cat can't come into the living room in peace sometimes, and if we have people over and the cat is out of the room, the living room is chaotic with two animals running in circles!
Anyway, I've tried leashing Luna when the cat comes over but then she just anxiously pulls on the leash and cries/whines endlessly. I've tried making her sit and lay down but she keeps her focus on the cat and won't look elsewhere. She is very treat driven so if anyone has any ideas please chime in! Thanks in advance

Well you can try to stop the chasing as soon as you know it's going to happen by getting him to focus on a treat you need to break that focus he has on the cat. Maybe try a training clicker? If he is treat driven associate the clicker with a treat. When you see the cat click the clicker he should want the treat more then the cat.

TLDR - We just used Time outs when it started with loud verbal commands to let her know it was wrong. Making an area of the house you cat can "escape to" seemed to have helped us alot as well.


I addressed this right away with mine. I didn't even let it get to the "I'm going to have chasing this thing" phase as a pup.

I have 3 cats. 1 is a diabetic 16 year old kitty and 70% blind to boot. She doesn't run very fast and misses jumps all the time. This was my first concern when we got Tika as I wanted to be sure this cat was at all times safe.

The first thing we did was create a "Safe zone" for the cats. You said the cat stays in the roomates room alot, you should be able to enforce that when the cat is in that room the dog is not to go in there at all. We have the same thing going.

Tika is not allowed into our basement at all, and I've had cats tear down the stairs to get away from her. We keep the cat food / litterboxes downstairs and so at first we just didn't want her getting into that, but after a while we noticed when the cats wanted to be alone they would just go down for a bit. I even have one that is still so scared of Tika it pretty much just lives down there until the second she is crated or asleep in our bedroom.

We enforced this just by watching her and giving a sharp "HEY!" when she put her paw on the steps leading into the basement. It took about a month but now when I go down she wil just wait for me at the top of the stairs without me saying a word. She never goes down and cats have a safe spot to relax if things get bad. This is all done without a Gate or baby gate too.... My 16 year old could never clear a gate so we just have a mental barrier up for Tika and it works perfectly.

In terms of chasing It was Time outs everytime she chased the cat when we first got her. I never wanted her thinking it was Ok. Now she plays with my male cat all the time (She doesn't chase him though). The male walks up the hall and she slowly follows him and he turn around swats her on the nose and she runs away while he chases her. She loves this game.

Hope this helped, or at least gave you soom ideas... Sadly I can just use what has worked with Tika and my Chows in the past.

~Chris~

Kya is very attentive to our cats as well, only she is more of a mothering type. When she was a pup she would chase them, but now they all come and lay on her and she will bathe them and treat them as if they were pups. (She has never had pups mind you).

Maybe Luna will out grow it. I would definitely try all the tips that were given but it could be just a puppy thing

Thanks guys ! I will try to enforce the no chasing cats by distracting her with treats when she ignores the cat and by putting her in time out when she does chase the cat!! We'll see how this goes!!!