puppy's behavior with my cat & a few more things :)

[vale]

Hi :) I'm new to this forum, but I’ve read a lot of posts on here recently... Especially since I got my little rott puppy :) He's adorable, but I do happen to have a few questions regarding his behavior.

First of all, I should mention that my boyfriend and I got Blade at the age of 5 weeks. I know it's way too young for a puppy to be adopted but the woman whom we got him from told us that the bitch didn’t want the puppies to suck on her anymore (there were 9 puppies in that litter).

I remember when I took him outside and he’d hear a noisy car or motorcycle he’d just come right between my feet and sit there waiting until the noise had gone away. He’s not as scared as he used to now. He’s actually gotten curious, which I find quite nice since he gets to see/discover a lot of things and people.

What I’m a little bit worrying about is his behavior with one of my cats. She’s… hrm, I don’t really know how you say this in English (I’m French, in case you were wondering how come my grammar or sentence formulation wasn’t too great ;))… In other terms, I shall say that my cat would be ready to become pregnant…! :P So she tolerates everything my dog is doing to her, and that is what worries me a little. He’s acting as the dominant one (even if I don’t like using this term – I just don’t know of any other word to describe his behaviour). 2rotties2luv mentioned (on November 29th, 2005 – I know it’s been a while! :P) that “when a dog places his head, paw or torso over another dog's neck, shoulders or back area, it is a blatant insult which says "you are lower than me, now submit". That’s exactly what Blade does to my cat if I’m not around to watch him. He even bites her (and she stays there, stupid cat :P)! I usually put the cat in a room away from the dog when I can’t watch his every move, otherwise I sit there and wait until the dog goes away to do something else than “play” with my cat.

As I mentioned, I don’t really like to use the word “dominant”, especially since Blade’s only 7 weeks old now. He actually likes playing with us while lying on his back, his paws in the air. I don’t think that a dominant puppy or dog would do this. He still bites us a little. It was really annoying when we got him 2 weeks ago; he just wouldn’t stop biting our feet, especially mine for some reason (actually, I think that my long hair doesn’t help since he just loves it… I must look like a big toy for him when my hair’s not pulled back in a pony tail! :P).

He’s been doing better now with the biting. He’s not all over my feet anymore. He seems to understand better the “no” command whenever I tell him – whether he’s biting my feet or chewing on shoes. He stops for a few seconds and watch what I’m doing. If I go away, he’ll start chewing the shoes again. I usually stay there until he goes away. Seems to work, since he’s not doing it as much as he used to. I also do the redirecting thing. Works well too. I also stop moving if he gets all excited over my feet because I’m walking around. Is there something I should stop or avoid doing so far? Or am I doing ok? Or do you guys have any better techniques?

Another thing that I would like to know is why he likes sitting on my lap while chewing his bone (it’s not a bone, it’s more like a rawhide treat)? If I’m sitting on the couch he’ll come right to my feet and try to sit on them! If I’m already sitting on the floor because I was playing with him he’ll bring that rawhide thing to me and sit on my lap to chew it. Does it mean anything? He’s not even trying to bite me or anything. He just seems to like sitting there to chew his stuff. Should I stop letting him come on my lap or is this ok to let him do that?

Overall, he’s learning pretty fast. He understands all the “sit” and “no” commands and even gives me his paw when I ask him to. He’s stopped crying at night a while ago: he knows that when we put him in his sleeping place (we don’t use a crate, we actually made him a little more room because he likes lying on his stomach, legs all stretched, and because we can’t get up at night to bring him outside, so there are some papers where he can pee if he really can’t hold it until 6 or 7 o’clock) it’s because he’s there to sleep. He’s not perfectly trained yet, but he does ask to go outside several times a day.

So here you go :) Thanks for your time… It was a pretty long post :P

[Barrie]

I'm having the same trouble with my "cog" (small breed dog that acts more like a cat); he used to yelp and snap when we brushed out his coat, but he lets our 8 week old puppy bite him all the time and we're always removing white fur off the pup's mouth. I'm concerned because he's always biting him in the neck, and I fear the kind of damage he will do when he's bigger if he continues.

I'd be grateful to anyone for advice on whether I should worry about this and how to stop it if so.