For Future reference....

[Miss Z]

Well, this is very randomn for me to start a thread in Dog Breeds but i just have a question. Well, my brother has always wanted a dog. Right now, we have Zsa-Zsa, so we couldn't have one right now. But although i love her so much and want to have her forever, nature doesn't let it happen that way. Someday, and i hope it is in the very distant future, we won't have her anymore. And that will be the point when my brother will start to plead for a dog. Ever since we got back from Lapland he's been stuck on the idea of huskies, Alaskan or Siberian. I just need to know a couple of things, because i don't know that much about dogs. We would have to have a kitten along with the puppy, as i think i would shrivel up and die without a cat and i was wondering if you could do that with only certain kinds of dogs and/or cats? I myself would be more interested in a smaller dog such a jack russell or a pappillon, and i thought that if a dog was smaller then maybe it would be more compatible with a cat. But Kurt wants a husky and my Dad also wants a big dog as he had a jack russell as a boy and said he would have preferred a bigger dog. I told him he was lucky to even have a dog! And huskies are expensive too, i looked up a couple of breeders around here and you can pay well over £1000 for a pup. And then there'd be a further £200 or so for a kitten, so not cheap. I thought about rescuing a dog, but then there's the whole problem of introducing a cat. But, by the time we are looking for a dog, i'll probably be volunteering at the local RSPCA centre and i'll probably end up wanting all the rescue dogs! And i would suppose that huskies are energetic, we'd need a dog that we be OK on it's only with the cat for a couple of hours on weekdays.

Phew! What a lot of writing! I think this maybe why i like cats, their independance makes them so much easier to care for!

Thanks for any advice

[Tollers-n-Dobes]

Small dogs and big dogs are dogs. Just because they're a different size, does not mean a small dog will any different around a cat that a big dog. Papillons and JRTs are both VERY active dogs, as are Huskies. I don't know a whole lot about Huskies but I do know that they have a VERY high prey drive, higher than a lot of other dogs. Are there certain personality/temperament traits you/your brother would like in a dog? are are you/him just basing is on appearance? If you get a dog from a reputable breeder, they're all going to be expensive. It's not just Huskies. I've never had a cat & probably never will so I'm not sure if you'd need to get a kitten with a puppy, some people do this but others don't. I also reccomend that until you can fully trust a dog to be a lone by itself when you're away, to put him/her in a crate. Not everyone does this, but I feel it's important. Sorry I'm not of much help, but I hope I was of some help....

[Miss Z]

Thanks, you have helped

I guess that with huskies having a high prey drive would probably mean they're a no go with cats then. I was thinking of that too before you confirmed it.

The reason my brother wants a husky is that he liked them when we went on a husky sleigh in Lapland. We had great fun petting them, feeding them and riding through the snow with them! I think what really got my brother was two huskies licking him so much and jumping on him that he fell over! So it's not looks. And judging by those dogs, Kurt would want a friendly dog, as we all would .

We know that dogs are expensive, but in general it seems to be huskies which are way ahead of the others. Most breeds, like labs and spaniels which i also looked at, are around in the £400-£500 area. But i don't really mind about the money dogs are priceless.

I've always been a cat person and so has my mum. Being around cats all my life has made me that way. Not to say i'm not a dog person, but cats are very special to me. My Dad had a JRT as a boy, and he had a cat alongside him, that's why i was thinking that small dogs went better with cats. I'll always need a cat in my life.

Also, i'd never heard about putting dogs in crates before i came on PT. I'll have to research them further.

But thanks again

[sammy101]

my godmother has a husky/malamute and a husky/chow and they were both raised with cats.They both do wonderful with cats(she has 9 cats...) The dog should be ok if raised with cats from a young age.Of course,i would still be careful since they do hav a high prey drive.

[Karen]

Some huskies are okay with cats, some small dogs are not. It varies dog to dog, really. And a rescue husky will probably be less expensive, and if you go the rescue route, you'll be able to ask about whether each pup is okay with kitties or not.

[Glacier]

Huskies are natural hunters. Small critters are prey to them. Some of them can learn to live with cats, some of them cant. I have 8 cats with my dogs. Most of them are ok with the cats. They can never be left alone together. The dogs are not allowed to play with, chase or bug the cats in any way. The cats don't go outside. The one time one escaped the dogs killed her. I'm not feeling up to retyping Dominique's story right now, but if you search for her name you will find it. A friend of mine left her husky cross and her cat alone together last weekend for 20 minutes. She came home to a dead cat. They had lived peacefully together for 2 years.

And don't be sucked in by a breeder trying to sell you an Alaskan Husky. An Alaskan husky is a MUTT...any dog with a drop of husky blood in it can be called an alaskan. Some top mushers get big bucks for their Alaskans, but they are not a breed, not recognized by any assocation and there are thousands of them already waiting for homes in shelters and rescues.

[VTJess03]

We had a cat (Thomas, 8 mos old) when we got Belle (5-6 wks old); we weren't sure how they would react to one another. It turned out that Thomas hated dogs, but he was on his home turf, and was determined to stay. He established dominance over the puppy in play (once he decided not to be afraid of the pup, since he was about 3 times her size...no digital pics of that, sorry). Belle never challenged the 'pack' status when she got bigger. Also, when we got our coonhound Maggie (adopted at age 6-8 months), Thomas and Belle let her know in no uncertain terms how the status was at our home between the cats and dogs (first me, then my husband, then all cats, then all dogs). Of course, a coonhound is one of the breeds that has very high prey drive, and is bred to be so, but ours learned that cats are not prey; they are sometimes played with, but never bitten, carried, shaken, etc. Introducing another cat/kitten is really easy, too, since our dogs don't see them as prey. (The same cannot, unfortunately, be said about other dogs in our neighborhood ... no leash law and we've lost a precious kitten who never learned to fear dogs because of how well ours relate to cats ). Thomas hates being inside, but he takes very good care of himself, and Nicholas goes up a tree or into the rafters in our garage at first sign of a strange dog.

I think that it was critical to our pets' relationships that the first cat was older than the first dog, and he was old enough to be establishing his territory. They're so friendly now that the cats and dogs share the water (and sometimes food!) bowl and even curl up together on the dog couch (though I've not caught that one in a pic yet). The funny thing is that the dogs know strange cats when they come on the porch and still bark and try to chase them off (they can see them through the glass door) and the cats are only friendly with our dogs.


Thomas-instigated play session (Belle about 4-6 months old):

[Miss Z]

Thanks everyone for the advice

It's a long way off anyway but i thought i might as well know these things

And also, your pets are very cute VTJess03!

[Orlando's_Girl]

Well thats a good question. I have...had a friend who has 2 dogs and 5 cats and they get along fine. Although the dogs are very old and the kittens are young, I guess I'll have to find out how her kittens react to her new dog. I'm not entirely sure about what breed it is because I have only just seen a picture and it's not a very good picture at that.I think Alyssa(Maltise_Love) might know!!