CAITLIN FITZGERALD

Great, thank you for all this information! She stopped acting sick shortly after my last post so we’re just going to watch her and I’ll set up a camera. I am pretty certain she forgot to pee. She is only territorial with the cats when they walk around her while she eats or chews high value treats and the amount of urine was wayyy too much to be one of the cats. The jumping on the couch is playful. She will play with the cats who always start it but then they walk away so she starts chasing them to keep the play going. They’ll run to the couch to escape and she follows them. I will not risk confusing her so we’ll just keep her off the couch. Thanks again! 🙂

Actually, I am starting to think maybe it was a UTI now or something medical after all because she vomited this morning and hasn't touched her breakfast yet. I'll take her to the vet. Also, upon considering further, we don't know if she peed when she was outside with the kids so she may have forgotten to go with all the fun and excitement and then they left and she couldn't hold it in. Curious why she is going on the couch but last time she had an accident on the floor, we struggled to hide our frustration (we saw it as it happened) and since she's not allowed to be on the couch and she eats on the rug, I wonder if that seemed like a location that hadn't been assigned any value... if that makes sense? Also that is where the cats like to sleep so maybe she was marking. We would not mind letting her sleep on the couch with them (she's tried a few times) but when she starts playing with them, she tries to chase them onto the couch when they go to their hammocks. Is it possible to teach her that it is acceptable to sleep on the couch but not jump on it or chase the cats? Or would it be better to just keep her off it completely?

Hi Adrienne! I’ve been so proud of Atari, we haven’t needed to seek your help in so long. She is now 1 year and 5 months old. (cattle dog /Labrador). We had an incident about 5 or 6 months ago where she seemed calm and she’s been getting super comfortable and happy with the cats and everything was great. Husband and I both started our nightly routine of getting ready for bed and doing some cleaning. We come back into living room and find a puddle on the couch. We didn’t see it happen, we almost didn’t even know it had happened. She seemed calm before and after and the cats weren’t even nearby. Ok so we decided to see if it happens again and cleaned the cushion so she shouldn’t be triggered to do it again. Then tonight, we had some friends over with their 10 year old sons. They love her, she’s played with them many times, and she was calm and happy with them. They left and everything was normal and calm in the house. We leave the room briefly and come back to find a puddle on the couch and footprints/pee all along ALL of the cushions. She was sitting on the ground calmly after. We have no idea what is going on and she doesn’t seem distressed and she had been outside only an hour earlier and we didn’t have anything unusual beforehand so I don’t think it was medical or needing to empty her bladder. She also knows she is not allowed on the couch. Those are the only times so I don’t think she is marking and the weird thing is no one was even around. The cats were in the room but not even near her. (I don’t know for sure but she loves them). Sending photos of earlier today so you can see is calm with the cats and kids. Please let us know your thoughts as it seems totally random and unexplainable to us. thanks, Caity

Hi Adrienne, Thank you, that is all so helpful and reassuring! We will build these things into our routine and keep working with her and the kitties. 🙂

Hi Adrienne, So I guess not the last update for Atari after all... she's been doing really great with the kitties. We have been letting them out every night for about an hour and they walk around and she follows them and smells. They swat at her and sometimes hiss on occasion but for the most part, they just keep walking around her and even trying to play with her. She just follows them and smells them. She sometimes hits her threshold where she will sort of follow them quickly - not quite a chase but bordering on a chase and then we end the interactions. Most of the time though, she ends up sitting down or laying somewhere and they stare at each other calmly or she will even look away for a bit. Then they start walking around her again and she follows them more. They seem to be trying to get her to engaged though because no one sits still for long. We watch almost the whole thing but feel ok doing our chores as we prepare for the next day and just always staying close and within earshot. No one gets too intense and the cats are very comfortable. They walk with their tails straight up and body relaxed and can always escape over the gate if they get annoyed with her. Atari has her ears and tail up like she's excited but she doesn't express any sort of aggression or hunting stance and if they swat at her she does not react at all. If the cats hiss like they are getting annoyed, we end things. Each night seems to be better than the previous one and we can see that in the near future they will all hang out without being so excited. However, we have had three incidents where she has peed in the house now. She went almost 4 months without an accident (aside from occasional excitement peeing when she sees new people). The first two times it was right near the sliding door to the backyard and we did not see her do it. We had left the room for a moment and came back to the puddle both times. We figured maybe she had needed to go because she had not been outside in about 4 hours (should not be an issue though as she can go like 10 hours at night) and she's 9 months old now. We started taking her outside to pee before we let the cats out and that seemed to stop it. However, last night, we forgot and she did it again and this time in the living room. I was there this time. The little white cat was laying on the couch. Playfully swatting her with no claws. She was sniffing the cat with tail wagging and they were happy/relaxed. Then suddenly Atari took a step backward and peed. I don't see any sign of aggression or stress from her. She loves the "kitty time" - she even sits at the door during the day sometimes and cries for me to let them out. I call her away and she stops. But I feel like she likes seeing them and they like it too. Could this be territorial somehow? Not sure if this is something to worry about and how to even fix it? The real goal is that the cats can hang out with her all the time and not just for an hour a day. Are we making a mistake by letting her smell them and follow them? We were doing the whole training thing while they walked around but we couldn't stop the cats from trying to play with her so we gave up and that's how we ended up where we are.... thanks for your time.

Hey Adrienne! Just wanted to share a final update on Atari and the cats! We’ve come so far. Thank you for all your help! by the way the little one is under the curtain but hard to see. They’re both there.

Here’s an update! I don’t know what happened to our puppy but she’s been much easier lately and this cat training time was like shocking. Thanks Adrienne!

Thank you so much! We've been doing these things and it's helping. I'll look into the muzzle too. I didn't know that they were used like this - I always assumed they were mean to use so that was eye opening.

Just thought I’d share this update as I’m proud of her. So I suck at recording a video while using the truck remote so this isn’t a great video but as you can see she is now ignoring the truck and the kittens! On Thursday the 1 year old jumped the fence before I could stop him and she chased him up onto the cat tree though so we’re still a long ways from real cohabitation I think… it’s frustrating because I’m worried she’ll never ignore them but we’ll keep doing daily sessions. The cats are impatient for her to get there too and she really wants to be their friends she just can’t behave herself just yet.

Thank you! We'll try these things. 🙂

This helped a lot to understand her. It also makes sense why every day has been different. We're trying to find signs to help us hit her sweet spot each day where she's stimulated and worn out but not overly so. I love this idea! Thank you. We have been working on this. She's great at targeting the hand but still struggles with the idea of the post it when I put it on the wall. However, to be fair, I've only tried it twice so far. yes, we're definitely going to try that! This all helped a lot. Thank you. I feel myself bonding with her more and more and my patience is definitely better. She's also been much better the last three days or so. Only mildly hyper and quick to calm down (knock on wood). I am sure some of it is in response to my feeling genuinely less annoyed with her. We also got her a ball that has another ball inside and she's been playing with it a lot and also started stuffing her kong with a biscuit so it's harder to get out. That's all helping her. I hear you about not comparing her to our corgi and you're totally right, thank you for saying that. I think it's mostly upsetting to me that I thought I was mentally prepared for having her and then I feel like I've not been handling it well (too impatient, frustrated, not expecting how hard this would be). I thought I knew what I was getting into because I've done this before. However, I definitely need to focus on what is rather than what I expected it would be like. I know we'll be ok once we get past this puppy stage. Thanks again!

Thanks again, you are really helping me so much!

Ok that’s all very helpful! Thank you for responding to both posts. I’m sorry if we seem so dramatic - the struggle is real over here. But understanding her working breed stuff and why she is so high strung helps. We moved the sleeping mat to another room and she just had her bed now so no more peeing at night (yet). She did pee on some papers at my parents’ house yesterday and the old dog was not around - my mom said she was playing with her outside and then she ran around the house and then peed somewhat randomly. but otherwise, after reading your response I took her on a longer walk this morning and it helped a lot. I think if I walk to little then she gets wired but if I walk a lot then she gets worn out. Then tonight instead of a second walk we took her to the dog park since she is now fully vaxxed. When we came home she napped and then she was able to play in the backyard for about an hour until she decided to bark at them and we redirected her and then brought her inside. Fetch outside also helped a lot last night. so we’ll keep working on the stuff you suggested - thanks again! as for the cats, she’s doing great but can’t handle the fence being down. How will we know if we can progress? I can’t find a play pen that looks sturdy enough for her size and since we haven’t crated her I’m not sure how to advance this This video was after 10 minutes of her sitting and doing training/games with cats there - tonight was even better than what you see here - we let her look at them as long as she stays calm but as you can see I struggled to redirect her too. I think her “come” has definitely become poisoned

Last night we do not know why but she peed on her mat again when we were getting ready for bed. There was no yelling or upset - she was just sniffing around something really intensely under the dresser but we don't know what she was smelling - and I was just trying to get her to settle down for bed. Dan was sort of playing with her, trying to get her to relax. I went to wash my face and then I heard him calling me. She peed all over her mat. Neither of us got mad and we were just cleaning it up which took a while as there was tons of pee. I left to throw away the paper towels and as soon as I walked out, she peed on the floor. We didn't get mad - but we don't know why she did it twice. She did drink a lot of water last night but she also peed before we brought her to the room. I think it was behavioral but we're not sure what is going on. We're going to cut her off from water a couple of hours before bed but she gets thirsty so I don't know how well she'll take that. This morning, she has been a handful. We let her out three times and she went potty and then went straight to the fence where the neighbor dogs sometimes are. They weren't there and she cried nonstop. She would not listen to us when we tried to distract her and we had to use high value treats that we save for puppy class to lure her back. She threw several tantrums and has stood at the sliding door and barked since we brought her in. I could not redirect her constantly as we both had meetings so we just let her bark it out. She's so bored but doesn't want to use licking mat, kongs, frozen rag, or toys. She just wants to go outside. She also went to bark at the door where the cats were. Also, she had seemed calm at first but the cats wanted out so we decided to let her stay on leash with them and moved the gate to the bedroom so the 1 yr old cat can feel safe. (She had been doing so well with the cat training so I guess we got cocky). The 8 month old cat went to the hammock above the couch and Atari didn't chase her at first but then changed her mind and jumped on the couch, over the spikey mats, onto the back of the couch so she was face to face with the cat who hissed at her. I grabbed her and we took the cats out of the living room again. Yes, we moved too fast and now I worry we stepped backward. Now she's been barking nonstop at both doors. We're not giving her attention - she finally gave up and fell asleep right now as I was typing this message but it was about 2 hours of this. So anyway, not sure what to do about the obsessive wanting to go outside and bark at dogs + constant boredom. She literally only wants us to engage with her and will not play alone. Even with her stuffed kong, she will only eat them if we hold the kong for her. I thought about getting her a puzzle but I don't think she'll use them because she tends to get frustrated very fast. Also, when I was throwing the treats to get her to walk away from the doors, she started doing it for attention and to get the treats so I think I must have done it wrong. The only thing that makes her quiet/calm is giving her a bully stick and obviously we can't give her bully stick after bully stick. I worry they'll lose value and upset her stomach. So I feel like I must be doing everything wrong because she's peeing at night almost every evening now and she's no longer redirectable - starting to behave even worse all the time.