I have a 4 y/o gsp. he was raised with 2 grown cats since he was 8 weeks from day one he chased them but never hurt them. He no longer lives with cats but has gotten into attacking neighborhood cats. he chased one down in the park and nearly killed it, i had to break it up and the cat was not looking good and the dog was bit pretty bad too. The next one he busted through a fence to exchange with one in a neighbors yard and he came back bloody with a hurt knee. then he caught one in our yard and was shaking it, luckily i was right there to pull him off.

there are cats all around and i love my dog but im really afraid hes going to get me and him in serious trouble. luckily i was on the scene all three times but if not, these cats would be dead. any ideas?

Several things come to mind.

1) Keep him on a leash in public areas until you can solve the problem. For his protection and the cats protection.

2) Do you have a fenced backyard?  If so, make sure he can't break out of his yard.  Let the neighbors know that have cats that he is cat sharp and to keep their kittys out of his fenced yard. 

3) Start working on obedience and focus on you.  The basic commands (sit, stay, down, heel and come).  You may want to get a trainer either one on one or in a group class that can work with the two of you.  You need to get to a reliable recall no matter what. And yes it can be done.  I have two GSPs and they are both squirrel crazy, but I can call them off of a squirrel and they will turn and come back to me no matter what.  It takes time and perserverence, but it is doable.  This comes in handy in other places to and allows you to protect them.

Good Luck!!

What I have found with GSPs and Cats is as our GSPs age, they mellow towards cats.  With our first GSP Poge, he was the biggest cat chaser as a young GSP. Then when we moved from Bardstown,  Kentucky to Wisconsin,, Poge was 13 years old and we rented an old farm house with mice till we could buy a house in town. So I adopted 2 cats to keep the mouse population down which really worked. There was alot of hissing from the cats when they saw Poge , but after time they accepted each other in our house. Of course, present day Rocky is the biggest cat chaser you ever seen   Last night he chased a farm cat up in the tree and was barking terribly up the tree for the cat to come down

Ok, now I am wondering if I should be worried..

My cat and Wachter share a room at night. When I turn him lose in the back pasture he chases her up trees. But when he "catches" her.. he usually grabs her by the scruff and tries to hump her. I never see teeth marks on her, but there have been a couple of times I have had to bathe the cat to get all the dog drool off.  Now I can tell you that does not make for a happy cat, but she doesnt fight me too much. I guess she has decided that the indignaty of a shower is better than having to clean up the dog drool herself.

I haven't yet seen a GSP that didn't chase if an animal runs.  My girls live with two cats.  Both of the cats are house cats and do not go outside as we have coyotes in the area and they kill cats. My youngest loves to play with the cats.  I have one cat that will stand his ground and the game ends. My other cat will run from her and the game is on.  They go back and forth until one gets tired.

Outside both my girls will go after a cat.  We had our neighbors cat come in our backyard and the girls saw it and went for it.  I think if they had caught it before it got out of the yard it would have ended up dead.  We have since warned our neighbor to keep her cat out of the yard and we have had no more incidents.

When we go out of the yard and the girls are off leash, they have never seen a cat, but they have seen other small furry critters (squirrels, opossums, etc.).  They will give chase and if they are getting too far away or in any danger of a street, if the animal is a skunk , etc.  I call them back.  They always come as I have trained them to a reliable recall for their safety.

My opinion is if the critter comes in their backyard then the critter is fair game (they have caught 2 squirrels, 2 rats, 3 opossums and 2 white wing doves).  Now I don't want to see someones pet hurt, but we have notified the neighbor and done the best we can with our fence to keep other peoples pets out of the yard (of course cats can go over the fence). If the dog is out and on leash I am in control (we have a leash law and the dogs are always on leash except in their yard or in leash free areas), and if they are off leash I can recall them before they get into a situation where they might harm a cat.  I have never had them even remotely interested in other dogs except in that they want to play.

By the way our leash law applies to cats and dogs alike.  So, you might also want to understand the leash law in your area as well.

Once they have the taste of blood of their prey, you are history.  I would never trust this dog around cats, he WILL get you into trouble. I have one like that.  She will flat out kill cats, no questions asked.  Even Mr. Ecollar cannot get her off them.  Keep the dog away from cats, and warn folks....  

So, this is how I did the reliable recall.  And remember I did not let Halo off leash until she was older (3 years old) as she would just take off.  I probably could have done it sooner, but I just did not trust her.  Also, I did not use the ecollar until I was absolutely satisfied with her recall on leash in allot of different situations. 

I have two commands for recall:  Come and Here

Come is my obedience recall and means come and sit in front of me.  Here means get back to me fast and check in, no sit required.  The Come I only trained for Obedience competition.  I do use lot's of distractions that we might encounter in a competition like kids with food, squeaky toys, people throwing dumbells, people dropping equipment like gates, etc.  I did not introduce Here until we had the Come command down as I did not want to get Halo confused with two very similar commands. Once I was satisfied with Come, I started the Here command.  I used a flexi leash and a check cord for this and would take her walking to our green belt, on hikes in the mountain, on the street, in stores, anywhere I could think of and once in a while I would just say, Halo Here.  If she did not respond immediately which was true when we started, I would give a pop on the leash to get here moving and if she came she got a ton of praise and excitement.  If she did not come all the way, another pop and Here.  When she got to me, praise.  I rarely used treats as I wanted me as the reward.  Eventually, I could call Here and she would come without a pop.  Then I started looking for really good distractions (like squirrels), and still on leash when she would get really into whatever, I would call Here and again I had to pop the leash at first, but eventually she would come without a pop.  Then lot's of practice/repetitions.  When I finally thought she was ready, I introduced the ecollar (you can watch the DVDs that come with ecollars on how to introduce the dog to the ecollar).  Halo already knew the ecollar as I had used it early on to keep her from jumping on our plate glass windows in the back of our house (didn't want her sliced up).  Once off leash, I let here get a short distance away and called Here, she came no problem.  Then I let her roam further and called Here, and when she didn't respond I used the ecollar on the lowest setting and only released it when she turned to come back to me.  After that she came every time.  We have now had her off leash, but always with the collar on on mountain hikes and at my inlaws who have several acres.  She is reliable even with squirrels or other critter distractions and comes fast as she can back to me.  We even had my inlaws cat as a distraction and I did not want Halo to go after their cat, so I called Here and she came.

One other note is you never want to get in a hurry with this especially when you introduce the ecollar and you always want to make the reward of returning to you the best thing on earth.  A heavy dose of patience is also good.  I have seen folks try to rush this and fail miserably and I have seen folks be inconsistent and fail miserably.

You should also make sure you work with the Here command a little every week so it stays fresh in their mind. Also, when you start training make the sessions short and fun.  Don't drill for long periods of time as then it is not fun for the dog.

Hope this helps and Good Luck.

carlower1: The other thing I forgot to point out is that all dogs are different.  My other GSP was born trained (no kidding at 10 weeks she would come when called and has never responded any other way) and has always been reliable. That made it especially hard with Halo as she was the total opposite. I tried her off leash when she was about a year and all I saw was her little butt running fast as she could away.  The only way I got her back was I sent Belle after her and then called Belle back to me.  Halo followed.  At that point I knew I needed a reliable recall.

I had gotten the same thing from obedience trainers with regard to come, but when you get out in the open it is another story.  Also, didn't want to mess up her come for obedience trials so I decided on a different command for general use (here).

Keep us posted on your progress and keep the questions coming.

carlower1:  go back to basics, check cord 101 anyone?  When you say HERE OR COME, the dog needs to understand first, that COME IS NOT AN OPTION!  Reel him in, until he's right in front of you, each and everytime.  Until he comes back at 99%, he stays on the check cord.  But if you wanna speed that up, time to introduce him to ecollar!!  Did you get one with a pager tone on it? 

Pet Smart and Cabela's as well as numerous ON LINE Gun/Bird Dog sites, sell the cords. We got Bean a brand new NYLON one from petsmart 50 footer...wanted the nylon for the ease of drying after swimming

Renee'