My neighbors have a very energetic dog, and it just threw me into a state of grief. The dog just ran out of the yard chasing my cat into the woods. The dog has tried biting my cat before, and now I'm worried. Any suggestions on what to do?
When you do find your cat or if you already do have your cat then either keep the cat inside, have your parents make a fence around the yard so that the dog can't try to harm your cat, call animal control so that they take the dog away or tell your neighbors to keep that dog on a leash or you will contact animal control.
Try talking pacifically with your neighbors, telling them why is the dog bothering you so much and tell them to look after their dog better. I do not recommend keep looking after the cat all the time because it annoys the cat and it will be really boring. That already happened to me once.
That wouldn't work cuz my neighbors told ME about the incident. that plus they have an "invisible fence" that the dog ignored. also, i am actually allergic to cats, so my cat has to stay outside. (dont accuse animal cruelty we made a temp-controlled cathouse for her.)
Definitely see if you can get you and your parents into a mutual confrontation with your neighbors. See if they can do anything about keeping the dog leashed or, even better, one of those new-fangled shock collars that keep the dog around the perimeter of the house. It takes a lot of conditioning to make a dog constantly abstain from doing something, obviously something your neighbors don't have the effort for.
Another idea is to have your cat be inside. Instead of making your neighbors condition the dog, you can condition your cat, if you're worried about the usual "clawing on the furniture" or "eeing on the floor" issues. A play area with scratching posts and a scented litterbox helps a ton with these things.
also, the dog hasn't come back either so we can't do much about having IT trained yet. Also, my cat can't stand being contained, so us making a fence would be like torture for her.
All I can think of since you can't have a fence or the cat inside is when the dog gets back tell the owners to get it a shock collar... nicely. Then if the dog still keeps pestering your cat you could look into maybe paying half of your neighbors fence for the fence section that you would share... You don't need a fence but maybe you neighbors do.
Maybe the dog was smart enough and was able to turn it off with his paw. But I still can't believe that he tried to run after your cat, and that your neighbors didn't do anything about it.
Contact the owner and if that fails contact the nearest animal control services. People need to keep their pets under control especially if it's hurting other people and pets.
