EDIT: I am now working with a vet behaviorist, and they diagnosed my dog with an anxiety disorder, so I think that is what led to the startling from sleep issue. This post got no responses, but I'm leaving it up in case someone has a similar issue one day.
Original post:
I have a visit with a vet behaviorist next month, but I am curious if anyone else has experienced this.
Starting about a year ago, my now 2.5-year-old GSD began waking from naps very easily. The concerning part is that if he woke and saw one of our indoor cats anywhere within view, he would immediately surge toward them. He fully woke up and recognized them before touching them the first few times it happened, but then he put his mouth on one of them when it happened a few weeks later. He did not bite down, and the cat was physically unharmed, but obviously this damaged their relationship and was not an acceptable behavior. I have since learned more about GSD herding styles and believe this is not a predatory behavior but an attempt to control movement. My behaviorist (non-vet, but she specializes in herding breeds) agrees. When this occurred, my GSD seemed confused, like he was not fully awake when it happened, and he would sniff the cat and walk away.
We reached out to his regular trainer when this first began, but they said the only solution was to begin crating him when he slept. We had already started doing that at night when actually settling in to sleep for the night due to this behavior, but given how much dogs drop into dozing naps, it was not really working during the day. I began trying to learn more about herding behaviors at that time, which is how I met the non-vet behaviorist about six months into this issue.
The behaviorist has been very helpful in many ways, and she wanted to work on counter-conditioning with the cats during full wakefulness first. But my GSD's general state of arousal and vigilance had already progressed to a higher baseline than before this all began, and we have not been able to make effective progress on this specific issue.
The plan for now is to wait till the vet behaviorist visit to see if medication can help us get to a level of arousal/vigilance that actually allows us to work on this again. Until then, we are managing it by preventing rehearsal, meaning my GSD is not around cats he is more reactive to at all, and the ones he is neutral to friendly with are only around him with close supervision, and never while he's sleeping (he sleep in a covered crate or in a room with a closed door only). We also of course have pet gates up and dog-free zones, plus vertical territory and escape routes set up around the house in case a cat ends up anywhere they were not intended to go.
If anyone has experienced something similar, I would really appreciate some perspective. Before this began, my GSD was close pals with our indoor cats. We adopted him when he was 3-4 months old, and he was in a foster home with cats for a week or two before we adopted him. There was not a specific incident that suddenly changed his relationship with cats, but we did add a third dog to our home in late January last year, and this cat issue began in March. I believe the addition of a third dog may have increased my GSD's stress, and it snowballed into this other behavior.
Original post:
I have a visit with a vet behaviorist next month, but I am curious if anyone else has experienced this.
Starting about a year ago, my now 2.5-year-old GSD began waking from naps very easily. The concerning part is that if he woke and saw one of our indoor cats anywhere within view, he would immediately surge toward them. He fully woke up and recognized them before touching them the first few times it happened, but then he put his mouth on one of them when it happened a few weeks later. He did not bite down, and the cat was physically unharmed, but obviously this damaged their relationship and was not an acceptable behavior. I have since learned more about GSD herding styles and believe this is not a predatory behavior but an attempt to control movement. My behaviorist (non-vet, but she specializes in herding breeds) agrees. When this occurred, my GSD seemed confused, like he was not fully awake when it happened, and he would sniff the cat and walk away.
We reached out to his regular trainer when this first began, but they said the only solution was to begin crating him when he slept. We had already started doing that at night when actually settling in to sleep for the night due to this behavior, but given how much dogs drop into dozing naps, it was not really working during the day. I began trying to learn more about herding behaviors at that time, which is how I met the non-vet behaviorist about six months into this issue.
The behaviorist has been very helpful in many ways, and she wanted to work on counter-conditioning with the cats during full wakefulness first. But my GSD's general state of arousal and vigilance had already progressed to a higher baseline than before this all began, and we have not been able to make effective progress on this specific issue.
The plan for now is to wait till the vet behaviorist visit to see if medication can help us get to a level of arousal/vigilance that actually allows us to work on this again. Until then, we are managing it by preventing rehearsal, meaning my GSD is not around cats he is more reactive to at all, and the ones he is neutral to friendly with are only around him with close supervision, and never while he's sleeping (he sleep in a covered crate or in a room with a closed door only). We also of course have pet gates up and dog-free zones, plus vertical territory and escape routes set up around the house in case a cat ends up anywhere they were not intended to go.
If anyone has experienced something similar, I would really appreciate some perspective. Before this began, my GSD was close pals with our indoor cats. We adopted him when he was 3-4 months old, and he was in a foster home with cats for a week or two before we adopted him. There was not a specific incident that suddenly changed his relationship with cats, but we did add a third dog to our home in late January last year, and this cat issue began in March. I believe the addition of a third dog may have increased my GSD's stress, and it snowballed into this other behavior.