My beloved cat died suddenly in September. Both of the older 2 dogs grew up with the cats and were happy around them. We also have a pup who was learning to respect the cat.
I wasn't going to replace her but we live in a very rural cottage and we quickly started to get mice in so we decided to get pup used to a kitten we should get one quickly. Kitten arrived in October, puppy plays with her all the time, sometimes a bit rough but the kitten seems to cope.
The older 2 dogs are another story though. They just will not accept her, the oldest dog (the one who curled up from a pup with both cats) just gets evil in her eyes and has to be restrained, the middle dog is silently and deadly, opens her mouth and chomps. Kitten had a couple of scary misses but doesn't seem to have any sense around the dogs.
I have tried to introduce the slowly, used a cage at first then just held the dogs when the kitten was about but we are getting nowhere. Kitten lives in a room on her own as I daren't let her loose. She goes outside but the dogs just go mad at the window when they can see her and I have to make sure she is in before the dogs go out. We can't go on like this....no life for the kitten and the dogs and me are so stressed! It is nearly 3 months and we seem to be making no progress at all.
Is it hopeless? Do I need to rehome her and accept that we can't have cats? Any advice please?
The dogs are HPR breeds (GWP and pup is Korthals Griffon).

I crated our new kitten for a few weeks as it was a way for the dogs to get used to the smell of him .

I put their bed quite close to the crate so that they were used to being close to him as well.

They all get in a house on fire now allow Dave the kitten does terrorise them and does play quite roughly with them and they do answer back and do chase him if they are been provoked but he is old enough and big enough to look after himself and get out of scrapes he has quite frankly got himself into !

Thank you for your reply.
I did crate her at first but the older dog would just go rigid staring at her in the crate and refuse to be moved away. We didn't dare leave her even in the crate but tried increasing the time daily. I don't think the kitten would accepyt going back to the crate now she is 5 months old.
I really wish I could see a happy ending to this and that they would accept her but it doesn't help that she is tiny and has no fear of the dogs.

Hi

2 of your dogs are obviously treating the kitten as prey.  The more they practise this behaviour I think the worse it will get.  Unfortunately the kitten is too small & too inexperienced to give either of them a lesson - and with 2 dogs, even the most experienced cat would probably not prevail.  If your GWP & Griffon are from working lines & generally have a high prey drive then I think it's unlikely that this situation is going to work.  However, if they are not very prey focused then I would seek the advice of a good behaviourist so you can re-programme their response to the kitten.  I have a HV and she has never grown up with cats & so very much treats them as prey.  However, the 2 places she stay when we are away have cats (one place has 2, the other place about 5) and there has never been a problem.  She is pretty fixated on them, but they don't run and if provoked will swipe her.  However, if I'm outside and she sees one she treats it as a squirrel, and if it runs she will chase it.  She comes from show lines and does not have a high prey drive and I don't shoot with her or trial her.  I think if I had cats or kittens she would ultimately be fine with them - but other people with gundogs from working lines have found it difficult or impossible.

You could also contact your breed club/facebook page to see if anyone has any more advice - there is also an HPR forum with some very knowledgeable people on it.

Good luck

Do find a new home for the kitten!
My rescue dog has a high prey drive and despite doing everything suggested she bided her time and 4 months down the line the resident cat took a step too close and she killed it. Dog was on the lead at the time and there was no way she was going to let go.
Cat had lived in the barn since the dog arrived and I thought (wrongly) that I was training the dog to accept her.

I am so saddened by this but I guess in my heart I know it is right.
Why will they not accept a new kitten when they were very happy with the older cat?
Thanks for help.

The GWP has an intense, and deeply ingrained dislike of cats. Hundreds of years of selective breeding have been carried out with a job of work in mind. One of those jobs was to terminate feral cats amongst other things. Something that may not be required in todays dogs but something that can not be 'bred out' over night. It isn't something that can be 'cured' and if you wish to keep your kitten alive, then you are going to have your work cut out. It will be an ongoing battle and require you to keep an eye on both dogs and cat at all times. You won't be able to drop your guard for a second. If you are not confident that you can 'stop' your dogs without physically restraining them, then it would be in the kittens interests to rehome it. You say you need the kitten to keep the mice population down? Does your GWP not relishing that job? :)

Can you muzzle the dogs and only have them and the kitten together for supervised periods? I recently brought 2 little kittens into my house with 4 dogs. The 2 collies and the silken are absolutely fine but my elderly borzoi (Mr Beastly) very much wanted to eat them. This is a dog that catches and eats rabbits etc outside. I've kept the kittens in a spare bedroom and several times a day I took the borzoi in there with his muzzle and lead on for supervised access, praising any tiny signs of good behaviour, like looking away from them for even a second. It's been almost 5 weeks now and we're at the stage where the kittens can run round the house for an hour or so twice a day when I am around but MrB is still muzzled to be on the safe side, he just lies on the sofa watching them now, no attempt to chase. I'm hopeful that eventually he will accept them completely :-)

My rescue dog has a high prey drive and despite doing everything suggested she bided her time and 4 months down the line the resident cat took a step too close and she killed it.

Similar experience here. I had a dog back that I'd bred, as an adult. My breed needs to live with cats from birth to be okay with them. I thought he was going to be okay because a few months went past, and all he did was stare. (All day long, he didn't even sleep, too busy watching cats.) One day he caught a cat (adult Persian), punctured her chest, broke two of her ribs -it was only because I got there in seconds that she was able to be saved, and it took weeks of recuperation. This dog is now never allowed anywhere near cats. For various reasons he's now kennelled, and it's had the added advantage that he kills RATS for us -the rats were too clever for the traps,we didn't want to risk poison obviously and needless to say they are far too big for the cats.

Im so sorry to hear this it seems mad that the cat before was accepted but this one isn't,when I first got my two we already had two cats,and due to my total ignorance of my breed(at the time)I had no idea that salukis mostly, will chase and kill a cat but i was lucky,they didn't,couldn't care less actually ,the cats ruled and that was that.Peg and daws even ran into the garden to defend my tabby when under attack from next doors cat.
But,last summer I started to feed a stray, and then invited her into my home,very calm,the dogs had seen me feed her,but it only took 5 seconds for them to chase her outside and up a tree,i tried again, but failed,i thought it would just be easy,i have a feeling that now if I ever wanted another cat it just wouldn't be possible.

Louise
That is so sad.  Especially as you had done everything that you thought would work.  You must have been gutted.  But brave of you to be honest and post your experience for us all to learn from.

Jean