January 24th 2013, I got the cutest Black Lab mix and named him Luke (after the TY beanie baby, of course). He's a fun, loving, energetic dog that is too smart for his own good. I lived at my parents at the time I got Luke and had a real sense of what it's going to be like having children when I was constantly waking up in the middle of the night to a needy puppy. We jokingly coined him as having "Only Child Syndrome" because the attention always had to be on him. And when I say 'jokingly' we were soon to realize it was actually true. When it came time to move out with Davis, we had always said we would enjoy our time with Luke before we got a cat (since that was something we always wanted to do). However; almost a month of living together, the opportunity to have a cat came up.
September 11th 2014, an email was sent around the office asking if anyone wanted a rescue kitten. The litter had been spayed and neutered, microchipped and had all their shots. Better yet, they were free. I forwarded Davis the email and he got back to me right away and said no, we should wait a while longer before we got a kitten. I only begged once or twice (or a hundred times I can't remember) and then he called me up and said, "okay, let's get it!" That day by lunch hour, I whipped over to Petland, picked up the cat and worked from home in our office with the door closed and a scared little kitty walking around. We named her Pickles.
Baby Steps
Luke quickly realized that there was another pet living in our house and was constantly trying to break into our office to see what was going on. We gave him a few days to adjust to the smell coming behind the door until he no longer got curious. We then started exchanging smells more intensely by giving Pickles blanket to Luke, and Luke's blanket to Pickles. Needless to say, I was kind of scared when Luke started shredding up her blanket.
Finally the day came when we could open the door and let Luke go in her room to see her. When we opened the door to the office, Luke came barrelling in and she ran straight up her cat condo and let our a huge warning hiss. To our great surprise, Luke backed off, ran to the other side of the room up to Davis and whined and cried and hid behind him. We couldn't believe what we just witnessed. This cute little kitten had just scared off a 85 pound hunting dog.
We let Luke go into her room a few times a day for a few minutes until eventually we would be in there for an hour or so with no incidents of swatting, hissing or someone running out of the room with their tail between their legs.
Luke is absolutely terrified in this video.
After about a month of them living in different areas of the house and their meetings were becoming more social than destructive, we were finally able to let her out of her room to roam the whole house on her own.
The first night out on her own she slept in the bed with us and the dog, and needless to say the rest was history and they have been best friends ever since. And when I say best friends, I actually mean best friends and cannot be separated. Can't believe how lucky we got with how well these two get along. Their friendship is better than we anticipated and it's incredible to see two different species get along so well.
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| This was the first time I caught them cuddling together |
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| Luke no longer sleeps in his dog bed and has no problem with it |
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| Sometimes you just need a cuddle buddy |
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| She just loves him so much |
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| Our little babies |
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| He even lets her drink out of his dishes |
Best ways to introduce a new pet coming into the house:
We believe that we took the necessary steps to make sure it was a smooth transition and although each animal is completely different with their temperaments it's something that can be corrected.
1. Give the new pet their own space and area. When you get a new pet, give them their own "safe haven". It doesn't have to be big and they need to have boundaries to get used to their new surroundings.
2. Exchange scents and smells. We put Luke's towel that we use to dry him off when he came inside in her room where she would get familiar with his smell and we used Pickles "baby blanket" for Luke to smell/destroy. Also to our surprise, they allowed each other to smell each others butts (gross, I know.)
3. Do a few meetings a day. After they get used to each others smell, allow them in the same room for shorts periods of time and gradually do it for a longer amount of time.
4. Correct bad behaviour. Our biggest concern was Luke chasing Pickles if she ran away. If she would leave the room quickly and Luke would follow, Davis and I would correct him and if he wouldn't chase her when she left the room we would reward him for being a good dog!
5. Let them hash it out. I constantly wanted to intercept when I could tell someone was getting annoyed of the other (often times it was Luke being annoying). I soon realized that she just needed to put Luke in his place by showing him what she does not like and she did this by giving him a little swat or bonk on the head.
6. Give equal attention. As I mentioned before, Luke had only child syndrome and would freak out if we were in her room too long. When we came out of her room we would make sure we spent some time with him as well when we came out.
I hope you have peaceful harmony in your house with your pets and that they get along as well as our fur babies do!
-melissa xo
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