Help with greyhound and furries

[clareandy]

Hi everyone

This is my first post but I have read how helpful people are on other thread and I am wondering if I can maybe ask for some of your wisdom! My partner and I are the very lucky owners of a bright, clever and loving ex-racer greyhound - Heath. He has trained wonderfully and can sit (without any training because I read that greyhounds find this uncomfortable, he just sort-of picked it up), do a down, is toilet trained and waits to toilet and eat his food on command. He is very eager to please both us and our family, and appears slightly nervous in character (he does get on with other dogs and seems to like having a 'friend' but he also marks and 'acts up' so I am not entirely sure). In the last few mths he has really come out of his shell (we have had him since last July) and has started sprinting in circles around me in the garden. However, despite all this great great stuff, I would be ever so grateful for some advice. He is very sensitive to cats and small dogs. He appears frightened, tries to move away and then lunges hard. We had an incident with a small furry dog (thank heavens - very quickly completely fully recovered) last year which has really damaged my confidence with him outside of our home and garden. While I completely understand that his racing life will make it difficult/impossible to completely remove this prey instinct, I feel that it would be beneficial for all of us if we complete some serious training in this area and I would love some help on this.

Staring: he will stare out of our patio doors to the garden. I am not sure how to distract him without treating the staring.

Cat/white box/furry thing: If he sees a cat in the garden he will whine very loudly then jog about - half in fear, half in chase mode. He looks as though he doesn't know what to do (flight or flight?) and runs in all directions. I try to distract him with a treat/squeaky ball/taking him out of the room but this only works temporarily and I feel that I am just rewarding his 'negative' reaction.

Small furry dogs outside: He is not good with small furry dogs like terriers, jack russells etc. He was dog tested at the rescue centre and he passed and they expressed no concerns whatsoever. However, he is muzzled at all times when outside, with a strong fabric collar which is attached to a harness. His lead ties the harness and collar together. If he sees a small furry dog, he will stare then do the leaping about (again, fight or flight) and is very difficult/impossible to distract. He and other animals are protected by his gear. However, in trying to distract/improve his reaction, I feel I am rewarding his reaction rather than 'correcting' it.

I am hoping that if I can work with him first on the staring/cats in the garden, which may naturally help him with other small dogs. I know much of this is about re-building my own confidence too, as I suspect that he feels my nerves when another dog approaches/I think about bumping into anyone involved in the incident with the furry dog (the owner was wonderful and said 'he just wasn't quite sure that he was retired' but in my mind I'm still completely mortified). So I think this is definitely about us learning & improving together!

Any suggestions or advice would be ever so gratefully appreciated.

Many thanks to you all, Clare

[lurcherlot]

Ex-racing greyhounds and ex-working lurchers have been taught to 'see it, chase it, kill it'. That is what they do. In my opinion, you will never train the prey drive out of a dog - it's in their genes. You may well be able to reduce the reaction with treats, but the desire will always be there.
My dogs are whippets and lurchers, all of whom will chase everything that moves - they are sighthounds. They also dance about when they see a cat/rabbit/squirrel and one will with small furry dogs.

[lucyrw]

I agree that you probably won't be able to stop him reacting completely - it's both in his genes and has been taught to him all his early life. However, there are lots of things you can do to lessen the response and give you more confidence when out and about. I have a greyhound boy, Jackson, who would do the same as Heath - tremble and stare at anything he wanted to chase, pace around and get very distressed when he couldn't chase - I don't think it was fear of the cat/dog/whatever, just frustration at not being able to chase. He never leapt around though, he would just freeze and then lunge. He's always muzzled and repeated socialisation has helped him learn that some dogs are dogs (he used to react to anything smaller than him, which at 28" tts is pretty much everything!) but small fast moving dogs are still a trigger and probably always will be. Breaking his starey focus (I used to step directly in front of him and start walking and he'd usually follow my lead) was the key to eventually getting him to mostly ignore small fluffy things unless they get right under his nose.

We also have a foster saluki cross who would throw himself around when he saw dogs running/cats/squirrels (mix of prey drive and excitement depending on the situation) and so I taught him to "watch me" (Google it for videos etc). If you can teach this to your boy and then slowly build up from doing it with no distractions to doing it *before* he reacts, you're teaching him to look at you for a treat, making you more interesting than whatever's out there, and rewarding a behaviour you want him to show rather than feeling like you're rewarding his undesirable behaviour. The distance you have to be from another dog to catch him before he reacts might be quite great at first (for us it was the length of a football field) but perseve and repeat repeat repeat and hopefully you'll get there and start to feel more in charge of the situation even when you're close to other dogs.

Why do you want him to stop staring at cats out of the window? Unless he's hurting himself trying to get out I wouldn't worry too much, I think it's a natural reaction in most dogs! Cats go in the same category as squirrels, rabbits and other small furries and will probably always be a target for him - even some dogs who live with their "own" cat will still chase cats outside!

Can you do any safe, parallel walking with any friends who own smaller dogs? It might get him used to the idea that small dogs are still dogs. But again, he may well always need a muzzle to make sure every dog stays safe around him, he's been rewarded for his prey drive all his life before he became a pet, and on top of that its just instinct to grab fast moving "prey", and so happens without thought.

Hope any of this helps and good luck

[Ted]

To get my four Hounds to accept that any dogs whether small or large, furry or non-furry I took them for 6 weeks each of training which was an hour per week where there were dogs of all sorts and types. In the sessions they were allowed the first 5 minutes and last five minutes to play chase and be chased off the lead in a very secure paddock with no interference from their owners. These days I have no problems with them with any size and type of dogs and they do not need a muzzle on. Two when we are at our walking park are always off lead unless vehicles are allow on site the other two are always on the lead, one because she in blind and the other one because he has nil recall even though 4 different trainers have supposedly trained him to come back on recall. They are very good at teaching other dogs to like other dogs. However any thing that is furry and is not a dog is for chasing and trying to catch, because that was their training until they were 5 years of age. One of my male Greyhounds has caught and shook a minx which had a rabbit in its mouth. He has also caught a pigeon, and goes mad if he sees a cat or squirrel walking on our fence.