Hello all, I am very frustrated at the moment. I actually wanted to know if there were any advice or suggestions when it comes to having cats AND dogs.
Basil and Lapka are now both three years old, I don't know how much age will have to do with anything but would love as much advise I can get.
All my life, I have never had a dog. I have ALWAYS had cats and been around cats.I have volunteered at wolf sanctuaries, and animal shelters and recently had an internship at an animal shelter. So it's not that I don't have experience with dogs, I have just never owned one. I had always just been more of a cat person.
During my internship (sometime last year) I sort of fell in love with one dog in particular, he was 7 years old and had been at the shelter for almost a year. He was part Saint Bernard, and had such a loud bark that all the customers who walked through the shelter seemed a bit ski-dish about him. But I found something interesting about him, and began spending a lot of time with him. I started taking him on event trips and car rides, and always brought him ice cream treats and took him out in the play yards to hang out together. The only thing that stopped me from taking him home was well, first that I lived in a condo and he was a 70 lb dog, but also because of my cats.
Four months later, When he got adopted, I cried. I was soooo happy for him to finally have a home to call his own, but also cried because I would miss seeing him, because a part of me felt like he was one of my best friends. In every dog in a shelter, I see him. I see a lost dog who needs that same second chance he finally had. And I realized that I am both, a cat person, and also a dog person.
Or maybe just an animal person in general.
Moral of the story, I have decided over the past year, that I want adopt a dog. The boyfriend says "what about the cats? couldn't this ruin their life? What if they don't like a dog? Who's going to sleep on the bed at night if we get a dog?" He basically tells me everything he can to make me ever scared to adopt a dog. And of course it starts to freak me out.
Now, I of course would adopt a dog that was familiar and use to cats, and a dog that 100 percent gets along with cats. And I would also really like to adopt an older dog, one that really needs that second chance. But he tries to convince me it could never work.
So I thought maybe the advice from you all on this forum may be able to make me see clear possibilities of outcomes. How do your cats and dogs get along? How did you train/teach them to get along? Did you have your cats first or your dogs first? Do they seem happy around one another or stressed among each other? What kind of personalities and traits should I look for when adopting, since there are 2 cats in my home? Do you have advice or suggestions for this sort of situation? Are there clear cases where dogs and cats truly NOT get along? Do your cats get jealous often? I would love some advice on this, I favor and really admire opinions from those on this board. I think that I have always been given good advise from all of you, and would really appreciate it on this matter!
Thanks so much!