Would you have to supervise them?
Aggressive how? As in, wanting to play, or aggressive as in, tearing their heads off?
Depends. When you say “cat-agressive”, how is that manifest?
Some dogs think any small animal looks like lunch; they would be a danger to small dogs. Some dogs are perfectly OK with other dogs, large or small, but will happily eat any non-dog animal they can catch. Some dogs want to chase small moving objects but won’t necessarily hurt the animal if they catch it (or not deliberately, anyway).
I would say start with careful supervision (with the larger dog on a leash at first) until you have an idea how the two dogs interact. If it looks like they won’t get along, keep them separate.
JRB
As a non dog-expert I wouldn’t have a dog around that showed aggression. Why should I? There are too many friendly, calm, and pacific dog available to bother with one that could easily become a nuisance to me and a danger to others.
Agression towards cats has nothing to do with agression towards people. Dogs are carnivores, and cats may be interpreted as prey. They are also pack animals, and people are usually interpreted as fellow pack members (in a well-socialized dog, anyway). You can have a trained hunting dog which is bred and raised to kill prey and have it be a completely safe and loving family dog at the same time. It just depends on the dog and the way it has been socialized.
JRB
That’s one theory. Another might be that agression is aggression.
This is sort of defining the problem away. Well socialized dogs don’t cause all that much trouble in any case, do they?
Translation-Even well trained dogs are variable in their temperment and degree of training.
Sorry, but you’re just wrong here.
Take Siberian Huskies, for example. A well-socialied Husky will be absolutely gentle and easygoing with people and children, not aggressive at all. They make terrible guard dogs, and tend to greet strangers happily. Like all dogs, they’re social animals, and view people as part of their pack.
However, also like all dogs, they’re predators, and can be absolutely dangerous around small animals like cats (and babies, for that matter, because the dog will not consider them people).
It’s not just “one theory”, it’s how that breed (and many others) is. My friend has a very well-socialized Husky that is welcoming to strangers, great with children, and so forth, but also tends to kill small animals (like cats) that wander into the yard while he’s outside. The dog would never do that to a human.
If I was a farmer and I killed a pig to eat it, would you say I’m a murderer and start worrying about me killing or attacking you next? No.
It depends on the dog.
We used to have a dog that was a very good pet (she even tolerated the kids yanking on her tail), but she didn’t like cats. She had no problems around other dogs, big or small.
I’ve known a lot of other dogs to behave similarly, but still I wouldn’t guarantee that the bigger dog won’t harm the smaller dog. I agree with JR Brown’s advice of starting them out slowly together and see how they react. With some dogs you just never know how they are going to behave.
One thing to watch out for is food. A lot of dogs will happily coexist until one dog starts to take a bite out of the other dog’s bowl. Then all hell breaks loose. Keep the smaller dog away from the larger dog’s bones, bowl, water dish, etc.
This is also something that depends on the dog. While I have known dogs that were just aggressive to anyone or anything, I can also say that my dog, who seemed to have a passionate hate for cats, was not aggressive to anyone else in the family and was extremely patient when we brought new puppies into the house and they annoyed the crap out of her. Babies could yank on her fur, no problem. Puppies could yap all around and nip at her, no problem. But, just one sight of my mother in law’s cat, and my dog would immediately chase it up to the top of the bookcase. Every time.
She also chased bunnies and deer. She killed a couple of bunnies, but she wasn’t a very big dog. She couldn’t do much to the deer other than scare them away.
You can make all the protest you want. However, I’ve read and heard too many accounts of “well socialized dogs” killing the new baby or a visiting child to trust any large dog that shows aggression toward anything at all.
Go ahead and keep them it you want but I would never keep one and would go out of my way to avoid one.
I would not trust a dog who killed cats around a small dog. The cat-killing dog I had the misfortune to know had a prey drive, period. She attacked anything of a certain size or smaller. Not a chance I would take.