Yes, as you can imagine, there are some animal mind-game warfare going on at my house.
In the latest saga of the battle, my dog has taken to whizzing on the door of the cat box (it is a kind of enclosed job that has a door on the front.) He knows that he isn’t supposed to do it because the only time he will go and stake his claim is when I am in the shower. He then will run and hide under the pillows on the couch because he knows he has done wrong. Then my loud cat whines and complains until I mop the floor (which I was going to do anyway.)
He has been housetrained for years and he has only stared doing this for about a month. What is the best way of breaking him of this? I don’t want to scream at him or smack him like my brother has suggested. That is wrong and he is an abuse rescue anyway. He is a really smart dog, he is half Jack Russell and half Dauchshound.
Ummm…maybe I’m missing something really massive here, but…why don’t you just put the cat box up on a table or counter or something, where the cat can jump up to it but the dog can’t reach it?
I would love to do that, I really would, but the cat is huge and old (very large mutant sized cat) and she would not be able to jump up there and get into it.
That is a great idea though, but I was really hoping for some dog training information.
A training collar works for almost any bad behaivor. I would get one and give the dog a little zap each time he does it. He will associate doing that with the shock and stop pretty quick
Well, okay, then…[cogitating]…put it on top of something that’s too high for a Jack Russell/dachshund mix to jump up to, but low enough down that the elderly fat cat can get up there. Maybe a coffee table? It only needs to be high enough that the Very Small Dog can’t stand there and cock his leg against the door, which says to me about 12" off the floor.
Or how about this, if Puss can’t clamber up onto a coffee table: Put it on a coffee table or big wooden crate or something, and provide stepping stones of some kind up to the entrance, just the size for four kitty paws to balance on, but the dog still can’t get up next to the door and pee on it. He needs a place to put his three feet while he balances there and squirts, so if there was just something the size of a salad plate at the entrance, that Kitty could use in her cat-like way to bunch her paws together and climb in, then he probably couldn’t get his three doggie paws to do that.
I don’t know any dog-training ways to tell a dog that he’s out of line once he’s decided that he outranks another pack member and has begun demonstrating this by forcibly peeing on the other pack member’s territory. It’s incumbent upon the other pack member to demonstrate to the dog that he is sadly mistaken in his evalution of what he fondly supposes is a changed situation, and unless Puss is inclined to go ballistic on his ass, I doubt you’re going to see any change.
The training collar only works if you catch him in the act every time:
So no love there.
Or else get another kind of cat litter pan, the kind without a door that Pup can pee on. I take it you wouldn’t mind if he peed on a regular kitty litter pan, merely adding to the ambience?
I will see if I can figure out some sort of way to relocate the cat box. Thanks for the help.
The only thing I am worried about is that the dog can jump higher than the cat, but is much less graceful. Maybe if he goes for it and falls and busts his face, he will learn. Hmmm… Idea…
That sounds good too, but it wouldn’t keep the kitty from the box too, would it? I really have to admit I don’t know enough about stuff like this like I probably should, being the parent of such animals.
Maybe a Jack Russell can leap higher into the air from a standing start than a cat, but the dog lands different than the cat. I have yet to see the Jack Russell that can make it up onto a kitchen counter or dining room table 36" off the floor, but cats do it all the time. Dogs land clumsily with their non-retractable claws scrabbling for purchase, but cats land flexibly and competently. I can quite easily picture the cat box with some sort of very small landing platform in front of it, just the size for four kitty paws to fit on while Puss composes his four paws and rearranges his flexible body to allow him to push open the cat box door, a platform that would be too small for Dog to scrabble for purchase, and with no room for him to stand on three legs while he lifted his fourth leg.
And look: great minds think alike. I Googled “cat box door platform”.