Back To Square One

[scullysmum]

Having spent much of the five months that Johnny has been with us trying to stop his OTT reaction to the many cats that lurk in our street, even to the point where his "Nemesis" (a cat that is so pig headed that it actually has the gall to try to pick a fight with him : ) doesn't get a rise out of him.....I was distracted by a huge pile of fox poop deposited on our steps and whilst moving it with my boot so that DH didn't step in it and deposit it in the car.....my neighbours chuffin' ginger cat was lurking out of sight at the bottom of the steps and his lordship clocks it and takes a swipe.....nearly pulling me head first down the steps.

 

Now we are back to him barking and lunging at every cat we see, stationary or otherwise :

[Guest normaandburrell]

Oh, dear. I can just see the picture in my head of what happened!

[JohnF]

Peggy has gone and got like that again too since new neighbours moved in with a cat which seems to need to toilet exclusively in the flower bed in our front garden. I was walking down the steps (luckily only 2) but Peggy saw it and spooked it so it ran back past me, causing my knee to thump into the lunging dog's chest and eliciting a GSOD and colourful lanquage from myself.

So it's short leads and hyperawarness of cats for a while now; and it doesn't help that Peggy goes mental if she finds a Hedgehog in the back garden at night. Hedgehogs which cannot be picked up seem to send Peggy, by displacement activity, into the kind of intense hole digging which makes her just as hot as from a serious run!

[Finnsliz]

We feel your pain here. Have loose cats lounging in my yard right outside "dog room" window, driving my new boy insane.

[Roo]

I can relate! My angel Dusty was so reactive over our neighbor's mean cat (who, I swear, taunted her on purpose - it sat on our back steps, right in front of the door, and groomed itself, but only if Dusty was out there ) that she busted through our screen door once (we were getting ready for a walk and I went inside to grab shoes - she wasn't unattended for more than a moment, but that's all it took!). She took off running down the road, bleeding from where she'd scraped her legs on the steps, and I went sprinting barefoot after her. I finally managed to corner her on a neighbor's porch (the cat went up and jumped off through the railing) but that cat was our nemesis from then on. I was so happy when the people moved

[Guest june]

My pups are muzzled when in the yard and have chased many squirrels and cats OUT of their yard. There is one cat that will sit where the pups can see it through the fence. They watch it, but amazingly they don't go nuts, but my guess is all bets would be off if it were in the yard.

 

I realize it may not be possible for many people, but I NEVER take my dogs out the front door. We always go into the back yard where they are leashed up and I don't have to worry about any surprises while on any stairs. A side benefit of that is my dogs do not pay any attention to the front door most of the time.