Aggressiveness toward my cat.

[Tigerstripe40]

Originally Posted by saschia

If he does not obey even if he is not distracted much, then the problem is in your authority. Even if the dog does not belong to you, if you live in the same household, it should consider you as an authority.

What does this entail? Everything I know about training dogs is apparantly wrong with Vlcaks.

My understanding is that I need to get Zaz to submit to me.

The experience I have with training dogs is to do that, I need to roll him onto his back, holding his muzzle with my hand until he stops squirming, and then reward (ie belly rub) and praise him when he submits to me.

I've been told not to do that with this breed.

So, I left this to my room mate to deal with. -He made mumblings about getting a Leerburg dominant dog collar to train Zaz with. Two have been ordered, but apparantly, neither have been the right size.
No additional training has been done.

Zaz and my cat got into an altercation tonight.

I have trained 3 dogs, asserting my dominance like I had outlined above.
Could someone please tell me why this is not a good idea with Vlcaks?

[saschia]

This kind of showing the dominance might be fine in the situation when YOU are the owner = alpha and DOG is showing tendency to dominate you, or tells you to F off... or if the dog is aggressive towards you.

The thing is, this is a very strong show of dominance. You can do it safely with pup, during fighting game, that you playfully show that you are the boss. With grown-up - well I wouldn't do it with somebody else's dog unless circumstances really required it. I mean if you do it in a wrong context the dog does not understand and can get frightened.

The following is my opinion on solving the situation, based on my experience, while not being qualified dog-trainer...

What you can try first is do the training with the dog. I mean teach / train with him basic obedience commands, and insist on doing them at least at the same level of quality as he does with his owner. Show him by your presence that YOU are the one who says we are going to to this now and DOG just has to follow. Give most of praise with words/tone and/or touching mostly, give some with food too. Don't keep it too long, just make sure he understands that you are deciding in this relationship.

If the dog obeys but slowly or does not do the command properly, give just verbal correction (or physical in form of correcting the position). Make sure you show by your voice you are annoyed. If the dog shows aggression, you can use physical punishment (clapping over muzzle, holding the muzzle, if he persist, than you can submit him).

It is very hard to explain in text what I mean, so I hope I was clear enough. If you have experience with dogs, you should be able to ascertain your position with body-language. With wolfdogs it is extremely important that you are communicating your real emotions. If you don't care, the dog knows. They can read us like comic books. That's also why you don't have to communicate your dominance over-aggressively, unless it is really necessary.

[tupacs2legs]

oh deAr alpha Rolling A csv that isn't yours for a natural behaviour? I fear that is a battle u will loose!!!

If u start down that route imo you have already lost

[yukidomari]

Originally Posted by Tigerstripe40

What does this entail? Everything I know about training dogs is apparantly wrong with Vlcaks.

My understanding is that I need to get Zaz to submit to me.

The experience I have with training dogs is to do that, I need to roll him onto his back, holding his muzzle with my hand until he stops squirming, and then reward (ie belly rub) and praise him when he submits to me.

I've been told not to do that with this breed.

So, I left this to my room mate to deal with. -He made mumblings about getting a Leerburg dominant dog collar to train Zaz with. Two have been ordered, but apparantly, neither have been the right size.
No additional training has been done.

Zaz and my cat got into an altercation tonight.

Training is a matter of teaching behaviors or a chain of behaviors you want. In this case I don't see how rolling a dog results in him not chasing or annoying your cat.

For me training involves working with the dog daily practicing behaviors and commands so that they understand and get used to working together with me. When I teach a 'leave it' I start out with low value items (dog on a leash, asking them for attention to leave alone an old toy they've always had and rewarding) and gradually work up to higher value items (food on a ground, cats).

I don't have cats but we have a lot of outdoors cats in the neighborhood and nowadays if I spy a cat beforehand, I can ask my Vlcaks to leave it when we're on walks and they generally do. We worked on this every day for a long time. Until it reaches the level you want you'll simply have to manage the situation and environment.

As far as it sounds, Zaz seems to be a typical Vlcak who likes to annoy everything and everyone else. If a 50+ something lb big dog really had it out for your cat, I really doubt your cat would still be in one piece....

But if someone really does have a Vlcak who is not safe around cats that's probably not something that can be trained out of a dog - a person can only manage the environment better. Dogs and their 'famous' rivalry with cats is not exactly novel or surprising.

[Tigerstripe40]

Originally Posted by yukidomari

As far as it sounds, Zaz seems to be a typical Vlcak who likes to annoy everything and everyone else. If a 50+ something lb big dog really had it out for your cat, I really doubt your cat would still be in one piece....

But if someone really does have a Vlcak who is not safe around cats that's probably not something that can be trained out of a dog - a person can only manage the environment better. Dogs and their 'famous' rivalry with cats is not exactly novel or surprising.

The Vlcak is my roommates -He's my best friend, and I've lived with him for about 5 years now.

With what was happening last night, I think that had I been a split second slower in separating the 2, my cat would have been torn to pieces. Zaz had the cat in his jaws and I think he was about to 'go in for the kill' when I firmly said 'ZAZ NO!' and pried his jaws off the cat (I know, this is a GREAT way to get a nasty dog bite, but I was reacting). Zaz got taken to his kennel. The cat is OK, other than some hurt dignity and some torn out fur.

[avgrunn]

Just as Yukidomari said it is really typical for a vlcak to annoy everyone else . My Urobach loves to annoy our cats. However, with time it gets better. Now it is much easier to stop him from chewing the cats, well as long as they are still and we are around