|
I went through this in the summer, but my dog is a 2 year old husky. She has quite the high prey drive. We went through a few days where she wouldn't stop howling and whining at Kiwi and jumping all over the place (she even hit the cage once). She would pant and run around too, my boyfriend who wasn't thrilled about the bird in the first place was now thinking this was a REALLY good idea. Things will get better. And after a few days we were finally able to take Kiwi out when Xenia was in the house too. Then we went through the same thing again when he was on his stand. She has snapped at him a few times, cuz he snaps at her. But they can both be out and about and he will fly into another room if I leave him for too long and she will follow him as he waddles over to me, but I don't worry about her now. We are bird sitting right now and we went through the whole ordeal again, but after a day she was fine.
One thing that worked well, that I was completely against - I thought it was super mean, but we had heard it had worked for other people and we had tried the water bottle and that didn't help she just tried to catch the water after a few days of that. So we ended up resorting to a pellet gun. And my opinion of the whole thing changed. Keep in mind she has a thick husky coat so it would be different with a boxer. But we only had to shoot her twice and it instantly fixed the jumping on the cage and snapping at the bird. After that, for about 2 weeks, we just had to have the gun on hand and if she went to snap at him or was whining at him, we just had to pick it up and she would come sit down with us. And we haven't even had to keep the gun around. I would recommend trying the water bottle first, some dogs react well to that and that's all they need, others, like mine, could care less if they were hit with some water.
Good luck with your new bird and don't worry, the dogs will settle down. And I agree with Tena, give the dog LOTS of attention. I would have time set aside where I would leave Kiwi in his cage and play with my pup and other times when I would put her outside and play with Kiwi.
|