I was at the SPCA today looking for a dog to run around on my 3 acres of land with me. There was a very cute 100% chow chow there who seemed, amidst the crazy barking frothing jumping dogs all around me, very calm and relaxed. He’s a couple of years old and he was picked up wandering the streets with a serious rope burn on his neck and ungroomed fur. His owners were called several times and said they didn’t want to pick him up because they didn’t have the $50 to bail him out.
I have heard from several people and websites that chows are aggressive, dangerous dogs who can hurt other animals and people. I have 4 cats and would rather have no dog than a dog who would hurt them. That said, I played with this dog for a while, grabbed his feet, ears, muzzle, and roughhoused him, with no aggressive reaction from him. He didn’t bark, growl, or even get excited, just seems pretty tolerant of it all. He seemed to like it when I hugged him tight around the back and rubbed his tummy while he sat there. He was tested with cats and seemed indifferent to them, which matches what I’ve seen of his temperament, but the SPCA lady said she’ll test him further during the week.
Bottom line, I just don’t want to get into a situation where I have one of my pets harming another. I plan to crate train him so he won’t be alone in the house unsupervised with the cats, if that makes any difference. Can people with chows, vets, and people who have experience with chow dogs please give me your opinions? I want first hand stuff, because I’ve read what’s to read on the web. Thanks for your input.
Chows are often trained to be mean (like pit-bulls) and thus have a bad reputation. But a well socialized chow is pretty mellow and quite playful. They will chase any small animal that runs, though. They’re great for freaking out squirrels and bunnies and other things that eat your plants.
My brother has a chow and the dog is very calm and mellow. My brother and his wife have two small children and three or four cats, and the kids roll round the floor with the dog and when they were toddlers, they’d ride around on his back, clutching big handfuls of his fur. I was there one day and my nephew, who was about 18 months old at the time, grabbed the dog round one of his back legs and attempted to pull him away from his dinner, the dog just looked round at him and carried on eating. He didn’t bark or snap at the child, or anything like that.
I’ve never seen him chase the cats, but the cats aren’t big on running, so that might have somethign to do with it. I’ve seen them smacking his nose when he goes sniffing round their food and he backs off.
He’s protective of the kids, too. the only time I’ve ever heard the dog bark was when I was out with my niece and nephew feeding the swans at the river. My nephew got into a bit of a contretemps with a grumpy swan at the water’s edge. The dog barked his head off and went for the swan and I scooped the child up and we all went home a good bit soggier than when we started.
My brother trained the dog from when he was a pup and he obviously did a good job on him, as the dog is obedient and laid back. Based on my knowledge of this one chow, I’d say they’re lovely sociable animals, but I don’t know if that’s got more to do with the training or the breed. My brother had an Alsatian before this dog and he was a well trained and sociable dog too.
In my (limited) experience, Chows can be wonderfully mellow dogs with anyone inside their “pack” and fairly territorial and aggresive with those they consider outside their pack. This can easily be exploited to create an aggresive guard dog, but it can also be tempered to create a mellow dog who’s simply a little shy of strangers. As curly chick points out, training and temperment of the individual dog are key in determining which kind of chow you end up with. Sounds as if you’ve got a submissive chow to start with, and a good idea of crate training, so I’d say pick the fella up, enroll in dog training classes and you’ll probably have a wonderful relationship!
If, however, you have a special situation where there’s a lot of strange people around (a school or store where your dog would hang out, for example) it would be kinder to the dog to pick a different, more social breed. A chow constantly exposed to new faces is going to feel stressed out.
My chow doesn’t even give thecat–or the guinea pig–a second look. Chasing is just not in his nature AT ALL. Chows are almost cat-like in their cleanliness and I’d be surprised if one ever had a problem with house training.
My guy is pretty mellow, but he does tend to be a bit stand-offish. When he wants attention, he’ll let us know, but he’s not in-your-face like a typical dog. Cat-like is definitely how I’d describe a chow.
I wouldn’t try to introduce an adult chow to your cats. If the chow were a puppy, I might feel differently. As a vet tech I have had some very bad experiences with chows.
Whether a dog is cat-friendly can be determined by temperment testing at the shelter. Husky’s for example, are notorious cat killers. When we wanted to adopt our husky, the shelter tested her around cats before we brought her home. She has never bothered either of our cats.
I just don’t think a dog should be judged based on breed. Temperment testing is a pretty reliable method for determining the answers to a lot of your questions.
It sounds like a good bet. Chow are stand-offish, as previously mentioned. They are a one person dogs, meaning even in my family Sian (our chow) loves me a lot more than my wife. They are very wary of strangers, and the fact that he allowed you to pet him and rough-house with him speaks well of his temperment. The wariness is where the good guarding capability comes from.
They have a high prey drive, but it sounds like he reacts well to cats and has been socialized.
As a cat owner, you will like how cat like they can be. They aren’t needy for love like a Golden Retriever for example. They are very clean, and will be very easy to house train, if not already.
Buy an undercoat rake, and be prepared to do a lot of brushing at least once a week. You might be shocked at the amount of dead hair they can shed. My record is two full kitchen trash bags.
They have a bad reputation, but you have to understand that by definition there aren’t that many good owners. Only a small percentage make up the high end of the bell curve. The people that take the time to take dogs to places to get them socialized. The people who make time in their busy schedules to take a training class. The rest make up the big middle section that just do the minimum, with a lot of bad owners that abuse their dogs making up the low end. Combine minimal time investment with a breed that is shy of strangers, and it can end up being a bad combination. A worse combination than a neglected yellow lab.
Thanks for all the responses. My friend who worked in a vet hospital told me a horror story about two chows that were raised together. The male, for seemingly no reason, savagely attacked his sister and she need over 200 stitches. The owner was baffled (not to mention horrified) and said they always got along. My friend’s point was that chows get meaner as they get older and their temperament is such that they can become vicious unpredictably. Other folks’ experience indicates otherwise, so maybe it’ll be OK. I’m nervous about taking chances with my cats, though. We’ll see what the SPCA lady says after she does more extensive cat testing with him.
Is it possible that he’d act differently in the pound than he would at home? He was very tolerant of my handling of him and never seemed upset with me, but when he got comfortable, might he get more ornery? Or would the reverse be true?
When I recently changed insurance providers on my house, they asked me specifically if had certain breeds of dog - because they were the ones prone to bite. The Chow was brought up, in addition to Pit Bull, Rottenweiler, Doberman and Akita.
So, you might check to see what they have to say. Others go by the “it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission school” and don’t want the insurance co. to know and then raise the rates.
IF the dog you are looking has been temperment tested thoroughly, then I wouldn’t worry too much about that fact that many of his breed aren’t very good dogs. I’ve known several Chows and Chow crosses that were fantastic pets.
We’ve brought two grown chows to live with us and Fluffy. The big male we used to chain to the piano when he was inside so he wouldn’t eat the cat. Then, after several months, we be startled to find the dog lying quietly on his chain the cat sitting beside him. Apparently, they came to some sort of truce when we weren’t paying attention. After he died, we adopted a grown female chow from the animal shelter. At first she too was frighteningly interested in the cat and we had to tether her, but in a manner of mere weeks they became buds. Fluffy seemed to know when it was safe to come down from the high furniture! If my experience is any indication, if you keep the dog restrained for a while after he’s introduced to your cat, they’ll eventually work things out on their own.
I have a Chow cross, and he’s just about the sweetest, most mellow dog you can imagine. Of course, he’s crossed with Golden Retriever, so that probably has something to do with it. It’s true that most canine bad behavior has to do with training and the lack of it, but it’s also true that bad breeding can contribute to bad behavior. Since this is a rescue dog, you probably don’t really know what his breeding circumstances were. I have a friend who had a Chow, and he was as sweet as could be–to adults. Children, and some other dogs, were a problem for him. Don’t know about cats, but knowing his feelings toward children, I probably wouldn’t have trusted him around cats either.
Granted, all this is anecdotal evidence, and so means exactly squat in your case. But I’d be wary, if I were you.
I’ve had a couple of chows and never had a problem. Our first one lived in one house for the first five years of her life and then moved into a place with a cat. Granted it was a tough cat but after a week or two they were best of friends.
My first chow, now deceased, and my current one have always been sweeties who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
I’d take a post like this as a warning NOT to get one.
If you need to chain your dog to the piano, then start looking at another dog. If you want to get a pet, I’m willing to bet that that Chow isn’t the only dog the SPCA has.
Eeven though archmichael says, “it sounds like a good bet”, why make a bet at all if you don’t need to?
We had a series of chows when I was growing up. All except the last one were nice dogs; the last one was flat nuts. Can happen with any pet, and not indicative of the breed. The one before that had a wonderful disposition.
I’d be cautious, simply because chows are one-owner dogs. If the dog is really making up to you, it could be okay, though.
Chows are kind of weird. In some ways, they’re almost like cats. You can’t train them to do much beyond coming when you call. And they keep to themselves pretty well. Unless you want to play, in which case they will play with you, you won’t have the dog pawing you and slobbering all over you all the time.
The best and worst thing about them is their coat. The bad part is that you have to brush a mountain of fur out of them on a regular basis. The good part is that they don’t get fleas. The inner part of the fur has a whitish oil that fleas apparently can’t deal with at all.
Geez, now you’re making it sound like all Chows are time bombs.
Any dog she picks up in that pound is a crapshoot, even a puppy. She’s doing about all she can. She is thinking about this one, because of all the dogs in there, she felt some sort of connection to it.
If this SPCA is like any of the ones on ‘Animal Cops’, they probably do a full temperment test, to see how they react to strangers, babies, loud noises, food aggression. And if it doesn’t work out, she can always take it back.
I don’t know how you live your life, but I make informed gambles or ‘good bets’ all the time. Otherwise, how else do you handle Life and all it’s uncertainties.
I’ve had one full chow and two chow/lab mixed dogs.
They were some of the most wonderful pets I’ve ever had. The full chow I got as an adult shortly after she’s given birth to some pups. Once they were given away, her owner had to let her go because of their living situation. She was the best house dog. She would quietly pad around, oblivious to the three young daughters in the house. She followed me everywhere and would lay on my feet when I was washing dishes. In the middle of the night she would come over to my side of the bed and gently nudge my fingers with her nose if my hand was not fully on the bed. She never barked at anyone or snapped. She was patient with the children and didn’t growl at any of our friends when they visited.
The other two I got as puppies - one actually was the mother of the other. The mother was treated poorly by her mother and the other pups of her litter so they owner wanted to find a home for her before she was seriously hurt. (She had a little place on her leg where her mother had chewed a hole in her fur and down into the skin). Those two dogs (mother and son) became far more rambunctious dogs than my first chow but only one of them ever bit someone. That someone let my dog into her house, fed her food (PIZZA!), let her lay on her bed and then tried to drag her out by pulling on her around the neck. She didn’t even break the skin. Another time she was attacked by this woman’s dogs and didn’t even fight back. She didn’t have the inclination to be ruthless at all.
They also came into frequent contact with my children and friends of the family. They never hurt or attempted to hurt anyone else. They jumped on people a lot but with their tongues lolling out of their mouths and begging for attention. They were hard to train, I think because of the species combination but I’d own another chow in a heartbeat if I found one needing a good home that hadn’t been trained to be dangerous.
I was chased and bit by a chow as a kid. 25 years later one killed my cat (really still a kitten) in our yard, then kept coming back for several days, presumably looking for another.
Others have had better experience with chows, both mine were rather unpleasant.
My general opinion when adopting ANY animal is … animals seem to KNOW when they’re being evaluated … and they are often on their ‘best behaviour’ … and can be for a couple of months after coming to live with you. Then their true colours come out, they relax and feel more secure and confident, and that is when you see what they are really like.
I’m NOT saying this is bad, or don’t adopt animals, I’m just saying go with your gut, do your research, and decide based on a worst-case scenario - i.e. what would you be willing to tolerate?
When we got our dog (border collie), she was really good for the first few months, and over time she has become much more possessive and protective and much less tolerant of change of any kind. It’s been a challenge for sure … but she is true to her breed and we knew there was a chance she would be this way, so we are just trying to deal with these changes the best we can. The ‘honeymoon period’ did catch me off guard though. For the first couple of months we thought we had the Perfect Dog!!!
