[Help] Dog has started chasing the cat, advice or cat battle armor needed.

Yeah, I realize it would be my fault, that's true. We've got a fairly small (<600 sq feet) apartment so it was more a matter of finding a place for a crate. I was hoping we'd be able to cull the behavior on our own before it got out of hand, I guess. Is putting his bed in the crate an option possibly? I've never had a crated dog before.

We haven't worked with a processional with the food aggression. We've been trying to do the NILF model and hand feeding/dropping food into the bowl so he starts seeing it as an okay thing. We've done a bunch of reading so we've been trying different things and the hand in bowl seems to be working best. We did find that he reacts really badly to any form of physical correction, even if it's a tap to get/redirect his attention. I think he was really badly abused before because he immediately will rear up and bear teeth, ready to bite. Pretty much if he's not expecting you to touch him, he'll bare teeth, including if you're petting him and come from outside of his field of vision. You always have to get his attention first.

I've been trying to keep her away from his area while he eats. Feeding her at the same time in the other room seems to be working, that way they're both distracted with food and he doesn't have to feel as defensive. He doesn't seem to care that she drinks from his water bowl though, not sure if that matters at all.

Him being food motivated and using a clicker might be helpful. I haven't done clicker training before, but there seems to be a lot of resources in the wiki here.

You've given me a ton of stuff to try though, so thank you so much for your long post! He's a really great and sweet dog otherwise and we want him to have a good rest of his life with us. I'm willing to try almost anything to get him in order before resorting to something like returning him to the rescue he came from, especially since he was returned once before, I imagine that can't be good for a dog's long-term need for stability.

/r/Dogtraining Thread Parent