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Subject: Help, GSP living w/ Chickens and Cats

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jnettrecker User is Offline

Posts:6

11/02/2009 7:35 PM
We just got a 3 year old GSP today. She is a finished hunter with countless hours of field experience. One small challenge. She locks on point to our family cat. She didn't try to hurt him, but went nuts looking for him when he ran from the room. Secondly we have chickens and she was going ballistic trying to get through the fence to them. Any training suggenstions that will not kill her natural hunt drive besides not letting her near them? To date I have only owned Brittany's. Any suggestion is welcome.

Diamond

Southwestern Ontario

MH
Posts:349

11/10/2009 4:30 PM
I can totally sympathize with you on this one! This is a tricky (and sometimes touchy) subject. My first piece of advice is to get on this right away before anything happens...I think it's harder after the dog has had the success of taking down the prey, not impossible mind you (one of my old dogs killed upwards to 36 and 1 of my cats), so if it's already happened by this point don't despair yet!. We can debate all we want about e-collars but I think this is a situation that it can't be. When the stakes lie on the lives of other household pets and livestock I think we need to intervene. If you don't already have a collar I would suggest looking into purchasing one...if your a hunter it won't be a wasted investment as they are great training tools for other things as well (I love it for recall enforcement). Ideally you want your dog to completely ignore the chickens and the cat until she can be trusted to be around them without any hunting ideas. So nip any fixation in the bud, if you choose to use the collar find the stimulation to suit her degree of fixation, the higher the fixation the stronger the stimulation will have to be. It also helps if you are out of sight when the stimulation is given this will prevent any association problems such as her not going after things when you are present....but it's fair game when you're gone kind of thing. Always remember to reward good behaviour!! And do fun things too while she has the collar on. I usually take the collar off during the night ( I've made it a habit of charging it every night then I know it will never quit on me in a pinch when I need it. If your dog and the cat are in the house and the dog doesn't sleep in a crate you may want to think ahead about how to avoid accidents when the collar is charging) when I get the collar out in the morning it means we are going for our walk so their is always a positive association with the collar....it could be a treat, ear scratches, a game of fetch whatever works for your dog, just make sure you make that the routine so she'll WANT to put that collar on every day! You do not want a collar shy dog because they know what they can get away with when the collar isn't there, and you don't want to hurt her physiologically your goal is to make her feel as comfortable as she can so she will forget she is wearing it. Timing is also important! Make sure you get the stimulation timed to the very first moment of fixation! If you do it right she will make the connection and discover that she needs to give 'this or that' a wide berth. I had 2 gsps before I got one as a puppy and had to deal with the chickens with both and chickens and cats with the 2nd. The 2nd dog was very extreme in his prey drive for cats almost more than chickens he accomplished the kill on both fronts. I had to limit him to only leash walks and runs and no off leash running for a few weeks until I had the chance to work with him enough that I could trust him to run free supervised then finally unsupervised....only you can judge your circumstances to see how much freedom you can safely give your dog at this time, or what freedoms you need to take away until you can confidently trust her. In my experience and opinion these guys are smart and can tell the difference between a chicken and a fowl in the bush. Just one example, right now we have turkeys in our barn Remington will run in there and he'll hardly even blink at them....but a turkey in the bush however is prey! He's a smart boy and knows the deal on the farm now, if their caged up their MINE and he can't touch em. Hope you can make sense of this and it's not too disorganized. I am really hoping that this is somewhat encouraging to you...it's an awful place to be but it is definitely doesn't have to stay that way!!