Hello! I've had two cats since they were about 8-10 weeks old, and they just turned 6 years old recently. Behavior wise the cats are pretty amazing honestly. I've watched plenty of dogs and had plenty of people stay over, even had a pet bird for a while that the female cat very much adopted as her baby to the point of having several safe but monitored out of cage interactions, and through it all the cats have been occasionally timid but usually pretty solid. My wife and I now have an opportunity to get a 8-10 week old german shepherd from a family friend, and I wanted to see if anyone had tips for introducing the puppy to the cats, especially since there has been no permanent additions to the household since we got the cats 6 years ago.
I will say that the only real pre-existing plan we have at the moment is for pretty intensive behavior training for the puppy from the start; my wife is a licensed therapist so while this puppy would be a family dog first, we hope to get the puppy it's own therapy license so it can eventually go to work with her everyday. With such easy-going cats and such intensive training for the pup, I think we should be fine in the long term. So I'm mostly looking for short term solutions for helping develop that initial relationship between the cats and the puppy.
submitted by /u/WaterloggedWaters
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