We brought home a 1 to 1.5 year old rescue dog, Vinny, about five weeks ago. He’s a 40 lb mutt, energetic, and extremely sweet with people. Our household is my wife and me, a 15 year old cat, and a 7 year old Great Dane mix. We love Vinny, but we’re dealing with some serious issues that are making us question whether this is the right fit.
Cat issues
Vinny is completely fixated on our cat. Most of the time he just stares at her or sniffs her nonstop, but he has nipped at her a few times and pinned her once. Early on, the cat was still spending time in common areas. Vinny would occasionally bug her, but usually we could get him to disengage just by redirecting his attention.
She started hiding under the couch, and he would post up and stare at her for long stretches, occasionally trying to squeeze in after her. Around the same time, the cat started limiting her movement and would only use to her food and litter box at night. We eventually put up a dog gate in a room off of the living room, and moved her food and litter in there to create a safe space.
Now the cat stays in that room full time and won’t come out on her own. Vinny spends a lot of time on the other side of the gate staring at her and sometimes trying to get through the cat door. Once he locks in, it’s very hard to redirect him. If you call him to you, 90% of the time he won’t react at all. The other 10%, he’ll start walking over, turn around after a few steps and go right back. Oddly, this mostly happens in the evenings when my wife is home, and is not as much of an issue when it’s just me during the day.
The main questions I have around this are:
Is having a barrier set up, and the cat only hanging out in the one room, making the situation worse and/or keeping Vinny from getting used to (and hopefully bored with) the cat?
Is it significant that this behavior gets a lot worse in the evening after my wife comes home? Literally, as soon as she opens the front door Vinny dashes to the cat room gate.
Issues with our other dog
Most of the time, the dogs get along well. They play and cuddle, and even though play can be rough, both dogs seem happy. Vinny is usually the submissive one, probably because the other dog is much bigger.
That said, there have been several incidents where Vinny suddenly snaps and goes after the other dog. Early on, this mostly happened around food, so we now feed them in separate rooms, which has helper a lot. Because of that, we’re cautious about using treats for training.
More recently, it’s happened a few times without an obvious trigger. One time when our older dog was lying next to me on the couch and Vinny tried to climb into my lap. Another time when they were both in a narrow hallway trying to follow my wife into the bathroom. Those times, it feels like my wife and I might be the resources being guarded, and we have no idea how to deal with that.
At first, our older dog was pretty shaken after these incidents, which was really hard to see. Now, he seems to bounce back almost immediately and doesn’t act any differently afterward.
Separation anxiety
Vinny has severe separation anxiety. He’s destroyed wire crates and managed to open an airline rated plastic crate multiple times. When left alone, he cries and barks nonstop. At this point, we can’t leave him home alone for more than an hour or two. His ability to escape also makes us more worried about leaving him with the cat and our other dog.
He sleeps in his closed kennel every night. He used to cry every night after going in, and at bed time I would literally need to pick him up him up and carry him to the kennel. He really hated going in. We started feeding him in his kennel for every meal, and will spray pheromones in there around bed time or when we go out. He now runs into his kennel himself when it’s time for bed, even without us telling him, but when we leave the house he goes nuts.
We love this dog and want to make it work, but we feel guilty about the stress this is putting on our other pets. We don’t want to force a situation that isn’t right, and we’re starting to wonder if Vinny might be better off as an only pet.
submitted by /u/honkygrandma88
[link] [comments]