My Great Dane hates cats...is there anything I can do?

Hi Laura,

I feel you re: missing having a cat. I (stupidly for an animal lover) married a man who has bad allergies and, as a result, dislikes them intensely. He is wonderful in every other way, but this? Let's just say I spend quite a lot of time at my parents' visiting my 19yo Burmese and their 1yo poodle (see left!) and occasionally wonder what the hell I was thinking when I said yes

Over the years, I've had various combinations of old and young cats and dogs. In the end it might come down to a) the right kitten/cat and b) time. I suspect Chloe will have more luck with a kitten than a cat. Will also depend hugely on breed (probably better with an easy going feline a la Burmese, as opposed to a high strung Siamese or a tabby) and their individual temperament. Of course, if he/she is a rescue cat it can be hard to know exact breed (and history - you don't want a repeat of the last incident!).

Probably worth seeing if the shelter knows how individual cats are around dogs? If the cat's relaxed, there's a better chance Chloe will be relaxed.

As for b) time, you may have a rough start. Hopefully if Chloe has an issue with the new cat at first, she'll calm down when she see's it isn't a threat to her or your family.

Don't know if that helps at all!

Ah, dogs and cats. Right now I've got a GSD who is largely good with cats, unless one gets hissy and then she's ready to throw down. I've also got one formerly feral cat, one former bottle baby, and three current bottle babies now four months old. Of the five cats, only the former feral causes problems with the dog. The other four are totally cool with her.

Here's what I'm doing to address the issue with Cat #5 (with the caveat that this approach might not work with your dog):

The first thing I taught my dog was a strong "leave it" command. I chose this command over a simple "no" because I want to set her up for positive things when she obeys it. (Also, correction isn't a good deterrent for her.) Namely, if she orients to something I want her to ignore then I can tell her "leave it" and have her reorient to me. When she does so, she gets a reward.

The second thing I did was set up a child gate between my cat area and my dog area. The dog can't cross it because she can't jump due to her age, but the cat can travel freely if he chooses. (And he only crosses the gate when he feels safe.) My dog has a bit of barrier aggression, however, so she tended to get very worked up over the gate. That's where I had to constantly monitor her and redirect her behavior, praising her for calm and focus on me.

Eventually, she calmed down around the gate and the cat's natural curiosity and desire to expand his range caused him to approach from the other side. Then I had to start the redirection and focus on calm all over again because he would be hissing and fluffing at her through the gate. We worked through that until she was calm with him moving on the other side of the gate.

When Cat #5 got comfortable, he started coming across the gate. Again, I had to use the strong "leave it." This time I used it whenever she so much as looked at him. I also praised her whenever I caught her ignoring the cat or being calm around the cat.

Now she and the cat can occupy the same room mostly peacefully. Just because they can share space, however, it does not mean I trust the dog completely. (She has a history of aggression and the size difference between her and a cat is definitely not in the cat's favor.) Whenever I leave, I put up the gate so I know that cat has a safe place to retreat. If I'm home and I hear the dog start to get excited or the cat start to get distressed, I'll immediately use my "leave it" to call the dog off.

The last thing I'll say is that it's been a year now and Cat #5 and Dog still aren't perfectly peaceful. With many times daily work, I've been able to get the conflicts down to a couple of times a day. (Conflict being defined as Cat hissing at Dog or Dog chasing Cat. Fortunately we're no longer at the "Dog threatens to dismember Cat" level.)

Here's how I addressed the issue with the current bottle babies:
Because I had the "leave it" command in place for Cat #5 and she was already good with my former bottle baby, it was easiest to introduce her to the current bottle babies. All I had to do was put her in a "down" and remove the gate. The kittens started checking her out and I just required her to hold her down and remain calm. I extended the amount of time they had contact every day until they were comfortable with each other. (I always have my "leave it" on hand if she gets a little overexcited or they start to get nervous. I used it a lot when they would chew on her ears or play with her paws.) Now the three babies are doing well with her and she with them.

Good luck.

Lauram6123 said:

So this is the story...

I got my Great Dane (Chloe) when she was an eight-week-old pup, and at the time we had a wonderful cat staying with us named Zack. Zack was a dream cat. Playful, fun--he and Chloe played and tousled for hours and hours until each wore the other out. They were best buds. But after a year or so, Zack's original owner was ready to take him back and we became a cat-less household.

Then a friend gave us Mike. Mike had been abandoned at a gas station, sickly and sad, so we happily welcomed him in to our home. We took him to the vet, nursed him back to health, but it wasn't more than a month before he began terrorizing our household. He hated us, he hated the kids and he hated the Dane. Sneak attacks were standard fare. We tried cat prozac, offered him tender loving cat-type care, but Mike had apparently been traumatized to the point where he couldn't quite function in a normal home environment. In spite of Mike's bad behavior, we stuck it out for three years. In that time, the Dane decided Mike wasn't to be trusted. She would watch him like a security guard and defend us if it became necessary.

After a particularly aggressive Mike incident, we decided enough was enough and arranged to have him re-homed to a person who had no kids or other pets.

So it's been more than a year and my family misses having a cat. We would love to find a sweet rescue cat at our shelter, but I'm not sure if Chloe will stand for it. I am not exaggerating when I say that if she even hears one of us say, "Oh, look at the kitty," she jumps up and starts to growl. If she sees a cat on TV or even on the computer screen, she becomes enraged.

Does anyone know how tame Chloe's anger toward cats? I keep thinking that she loved Zack so much when she was a baby, there has to be a way to tap into that happy puppy feeling and make her more amenable to welcoming a new cat into our household.

Or maybe it's just a lost cause.

Thoughts?

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I'm thinking 'lost cause'. Looking at your time line, I'm going to be at lot more pessimistic about your chances of getting Chloe over her justifiable anger. First, she spent her first year with a fun, playful cat that she got along with. Then, that cat went away, a catless interval of unspecified length,and you got Mike, the demon cat. Mike was around for three years, most of it spent terrorizing the whole household. (I imagine after a while, even if he wasn't doing anything, you were all waiting for the next outbreak.) Sooo, Chloe has spent most of her short, doggie life being taught that cats are evil, violent, unpredictable brutes. I think this has pretty much over-ridden any happy memories of Zack.

And I say 'justified' anger because you did nothing to protect her - heck, by your version, you did nothing to protect your children for three years! Of course, Chloe feels she has to protect the house from cats! And, if she remembers anything, it's probably some version of 'Don't let the damn thing get a foothold in the house, or we'll never be rid of it!'

Some of the advice other people have mentioned might work: hand-pick a very tolerant cat (have someone else do the picking, maybe), keep them carefully segregated, retrain the dog (maybe start before you get a cat, on a trainer's cat, perhaps) and exercise total vigilance, all the time. That, I think, is going to be the hard part. Teaching yourself, your spouse, your kids to always check where the dog is, where the cat is, all the time. No casually opening doors or leaving gates open 'for a minute'. Because you can possibly train Chloe not to react to the cat when you're visible.

Based on her extreme reaction to the word 'kitty' or the sight of a cat on a screen, I don't know that you can really trust her with an actual cat, and all it would take is something minor to overcome all the training, for a minute.

LittlePinto said:

The second thing I did was set up a child gate between my cat area and my dog area. The dog can't cross it because she can't jump due to her age, but the cat can travel freely if he chooses.

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Child gates are fantastic, especially since you have two floors. Our elderly cat had major issues with new puppy when he arrived, so the child gate at the bottom of the stairs meant the cat effectively had the entire upper floor to himself where he knew he was safe. Even though Chloe has stair-o-phobia, it might be worth investing in a child gate - her dislike of those of the feline persuasion might defeat her fear of stairs.

She has a history of aggression and the size difference between her and a cat is definitely not in the cat's favour

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Claws are a wonderful equalizer. Our old Rhodesian Ridgeback learned this lesson veeeery quickly.

Frimble3 makes some really good points. Constant vigilance is the hardest part about working with aggression. Sick? Tired? Busy? Tough. No mistakes.

I'll also add that the combination of constant vigilance and constant training is both time consuming and exhausting. It's also a frequent source of distraction when I'm working.

Another thing to remember is that even if the cat were relaxed around dogs coming into the house, Chloe's tension (and your family's) would likely start to make the cat anxious as well. Instead of Chloe learning to be calm around cats, you might end up with a situation where a formerly calm cat learns to fear dogs.

Lauram6123 said:

Yeah, I'm fully aware that this is a situation I created. We experimented with different ways to try and keep Mike in our home, fully aware that if we took him to a shelter, he'd likely be un-adoptable. We tried having him be an outdoor cat, we tried letting him go about his own business. Nothing really worked. And what's odd is that Mike really did want to be loved. He'd come up to you and purr, and then you'd reach down to pet him and he'd take a swipe at you. I look back and wonder why we kept him as long as we did. I guess I thought he'd change. (The vet also encouraged us to keep trying.) And I have to say, the kids were never in danger and the Dane could hold her own. The sneak attacks were mostly terroristic jump from behind a pillar and then run kind of thing. We actually thought it was funny, which again, I believe encouraged Chloe to think she was protecting the house and doing us a service.

I should also add that Chloe's TV watching hatred goes beyond cats. She will growl and bark at anyone on television wearing an animal costume, as well as nature documentaries featuring flightless birds or rodents. She also can't stand Jack Torrence from the Shining and is enraged by the raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy.

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If you're still interested in trying to integrate a cat into your household then I'd suggest hiring a trainer to evaluate Chloe. Some of the things you're describing might not be cat aggression, but the only person who can give you a good answer is someone who can actually watch Chloe's body language while she is exposed to certain stimuli (like the TV) and also sit down with you and get a detailed case history. Take the time to find someone with a solid background in behavior and a good deal of experience, ideally some of it with Danes, instead of someone who read a Karen Pryor book once or watched Cesar Millan and decided to be a dog trainer. (Yes, they're out there. *sigh*)

Lauram6123 said:

Yeah, I'm fully aware that this is a situation I created. We experimented with different ways to try and keep Mike in our home, fully aware that if we took him to a shelter, he'd likely be un-adoptable. We tried having him be an outdoor cat, we tried letting him go about his own business. Nothing really worked. And what's odd is that Mike really did want to be loved. He'd come up to you and purr, and then you'd reach down to pet him and he'd take a swipe at you. I look back and wonder why we kept him as long as we did. I guess I thought he'd change. (The vet also encouraged us to keep trying.) And I have to say, the kids were never in danger and the Dane could hold her own. The sneak attacks were mostly terroristic jump from behind a pillar and then run kind of thing. We actually thought it was funny, which again, I believe encouraged Chloe to think she was protecting the house and doing us a service.

I should also add that Chloe's TV watching hatred goes beyond cats. She will growl and bark at anyone on television wearing an animal costume, as well as nature documentaries featuring flightless birds or rodents. She also can't stand Jack Torrence from the Shining and is enraged by the raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy.

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I don't see 'ditch the cat' as an option you should have taken, and you're good enough people you waited until you found a better home for him because yeah, in a shelter he'd not likely have done well.

Do you know how Mike is doing now? It may have been the environment that couldn't help Mike. I know a cat who was adopted and proved bitey, fairly unpredictable, etc., but with time and love and people learning her signals in a quiet home, she became a sweetie. Animals, like people with traumatic pasts, can have a hard time.

I think lp had a goood suggestion with a behaviourist - someone actually trained at an actual place. There are licensing orgs that don't just offer online certs. You don't want to make it worse for your dog or put a cat in danger, obviously.

Lauram6123 said:

Last I heard he was his same old self. He lives in an apartment with two grad students who think it's cool to have a volatile cat.

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He might have been one of those cats that turns up on rescue sites, 'Only to home with no children or other animals'. 'Must be only pet'. A low stimulus environment and really tolerant adults might make him an acceptable pet. On the other hand, his personality might have been the reason he was dumped - a shitty thing to do to an animal, but some people are not up for constant attacks, and know no better.

My concern in your situation is for the innocent new cat you might bring in. And, yes, I'd back the idea of having a really good behaviourist check out Chloe before you get any kind of a small animal. If she's reacting to any small moving animal-shape on a screen (assuming Jack Torrance is an anomaly - lots of people don't care much for Jack Nicholson) it might not be 'hatred' but a really high prey-drive. And if she's frustrated by not being able to get at a 2-D image, with no animal smell, I wouldn't trust her with a live animal.

I can't find it now, maybe it was lost in the Big Site Revamp, but there was an incredibly sad thread here about a beloved family dog who killed an equally loved family cat. Out of the blue, and devastating for the family. Someone here may remember it and know how to find it. That's what I worry about in your situation.

A thing you haven't mentioned is how Chloe reacts to actual cats. Not videos or people talking about them, but the cats she sees during the day. Cats walking by the window. Cats out and about when she's taken for walks. Cats when you visit friends with cats. There's a difference between her being suspicious of cats and attempting to attack and kill cats. You really need to know which it is before bringing a cat into the house.

I hope your situation goes well, but I would be a little nervous about this kind of arrangement.

You mentioned that she would storm towards Mike. That sounds a bit aggressive. When she gets close to Mike, does she look like she would attack him?

My own old dog is a pretty mellow dog around people, and he's more bark than bite, but there were a couple of incidents where he tried to play with, or tried to hunt, small animals. And he would get super hyper around other dogs, wanting to play, but intimidating the poor things, lol.

Animals can be unpredictable at times, and I don't know your dog, and the cat will be a mystery, so I can't predict how a cat will fare with dog who's that bothered by multiple things. It sounds like it will take time and commitment to make this work (if it can work, that is).

I hope that both the dog and cat eventually get used to each other, and the dog will be comfortable with the cat. I just fear that both animals may become unhappy in the long run, or something will happen to the poor things, if they don't get along. (Of course, you could keep them separated, but that sounds like that can be stressful for the owners.)

I wish you the very best of luck. Let us know how it goes. I hope all goes well.