Piggies and dogs

ThatPurpleB

ThatPurpleB

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Hi

My grandma is ill, she's gone into hospital and looks like she won't be coming out. I don't have a relationship with her, I've not seen her many decades now. My concern is for her dog.

I'd like to take her dog in to make sure they're taken care of. But I'm worried about having piggies and a dog, and whether my little nova noo would be safe.

The dog is a Patterdale which do have a prey drive. It's a farm dog, bred from a long line of farm dogs, so I imagine the dog does have this drive.

As I type this I feel like this is a bad idea, I have everyone's wellbeing in mind trying to work out what is best. Does anybody successfully have a dog of this type and piggies? How have you got this to work without causing distress or danger to pig or dog?
 
I think it can depend on how you are keeping the animals. My guinea pigs live in a house with a spaniel (strong prey drive if things run away but otherwise is just over enthusiastic) and three cats who are voracious hunters.
My guinea pigs live at the top of the house, in a room that is accessed by a staircase with a door on the top step. The door is kept shut absolutely 100% of the time and the cats have learnt there is nothing of interest if they go up the stairs.

With a dog, you could take the precautions of having the guinea pigs in a room that you can shut the door to and the dog is not allowed inside as well as having a lidded cage on a table. The issues really arise with handling and outdoor run time/floor time. Floor time would probably have to be scrapped entirely as (in my personal opinion) it would just be far too much if a risk as it would only take a door being opened for a moment. Run time would be extremely difficult to do safely but could possibly be done with rigid rules around where the dog is. Other than that, when you do any handling the dog can be given a boredom toy (like a kong) and shut in a completely separate room.

There’s always a risk but how much of one depends massively on the layout of your house (having a closed off room for the pigs), the breed, age and nature of the individual dog (prey drive, energy levels etc.) as well as what cage modifications you can make (on a table, with a lid) and quite importantly if you live with people (very young or very old) who may be likely to accidentally leave doors open.
 
Pantalaimon said:
I think it can depend on how you are keeping the animals. My guinea pigs live in a house with a spaniel (strong prey drive if things run away but otherwise is just over enthusiastic) and three cats who are voracious hunters.
My guinea pigs live at the top of the house, in a room that is accessed by a staircase with a door on the top step. The door is kept shut absolutely 100% of the time and the cats have learnt there is nothing of interest if they go up the stairs.

With a dog, you could take the precautions of having the guinea pigs in a room that you can shut the door to and the dog is not allowed inside as well as having a lidded cage on a table. The issues really arise with handling and outdoor run time/floor time. Floor time would probably have to be scrapped entirely as (in my personal opinion) it would just be far too much if a risk as it would only take a door being opened for a moment. Run time would be extremely difficult to do safely but could possibly be done with rigid rules around where the dog is. Other than that, when you do any handling the dog can be given a boredom toy (like a kong) and shut in a completely separate room.

There’s always a risk but how much of one depends massively on the layout of your house (having a closed off room for the pigs), the breed, age and nature of the individual dog (prey drive, energy levels etc.) as well as what cage modifications you can make (on a table, with a lid) and quite importantly if you live with people (very young or very old) who may be likely to accidentally leave doors open.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this.

I think dog is older, and knowing the hard life it will have led will be old for its age (if that makes sense). Although the dog is well trained I don't think they will be hard to entertain as they don't have much in terms of toys and enrichment beyond regular walking, being out the house and run on the garden. My grandma kept chickens and baby farm animals that had lost their mother's on the back garden. So the dog will be experienced in being around chickens and baby farm animals without harming them. Piggies smell different if she's triggered by smell though.

There's only 2 adults in our house and definitely space to move to other rooms.

Floor time is my concern. Nova has recently been moved downstairs with us in the livingroom and her cage door is open while we are home so she has run of our livingroom. If we try to keep her in the cage she chews the bars to be let out. I question the impact of that on her wellbeing as well as the isolation of being banished back upstairs without our attention.

I don't think this will be an easy choice and to a certain extent I'm posting here to think out loud and get ideas. So your input is much appreciated.
 
Worth noting that all dogs have a prey drive; if the old "switch" gets flipped, say by something small and squeaky running past, even the best trained dog may do what their instinctual wiring says. Anecdotally I'm aware of this happening even with smaller dogs and cats they know and like, and we've had some tragic tales on this forum about pigs as well.

That said, we have a dog, cat, and three piggies here. The pigs live in our living room on a double C&C stand and are never left unattended while the dog and cat are around (in the daytime there's the living room door, and overnight the dog is shut in our room while the cat is shut in "her" room, aka the utility room). We never do floor time as I don't like taking the risk, but they have a big cage and I try to keep rotating different enrichment things for them instead (usually hay, paper/cardboard, and forage based things). We've lived like this for more than six years now without incident.

There are ways of making it work but it comes down to how well you can restrict the dog's access to the piggies and how well fortified the cage can be made should that first line of defence fail. I'd never be comfortable recommending floor time though because I'm an anxious soul, even though our cat is an old girl who pretends the pigs don't exist and the dog is well trained.
 
I was refused to rehome a Patterdale by the Patterdale rescue purely because I had guinea pigs. They said even if I kept the door closed to the room where the piggies are it would cause stress to the dog as the prey drive is so instinctive that the dog would be scrapping at the door and be very stressed. I understood that and ….maybe you need to meet the dog and see, as it’s older it may not have a reduced prey drive.
I rehomed a Chinese crested dog who isn’t bothered by the pigs but …..my pigs never have floor time and the lid is always down on their c&c . He did once get into the cupboard that houses their pellets and helped himself 😂 only nice !
 
I’m sorry your grandma is poorly.

I’ve had 10 piggies in total over the years and have always had a dog at the same time too. They were both terriers, so massive prey drive.

I think you can definitely make it work as long as:

1. The piggies are either on a table or at least in an enclosed cage.

2. You can close a door between them.

Neither of my dogs has ever scratched the door to get into the piggy room.

Eddie, used to bark at the piggies when they were in hutches in the garden. Once they got older and we rehoused them inside they were on raised cupboards so he couldn’t see them and they didn’t bother him. When he barked at them they really didn’t seemed bothered at all. A bit like them getting used to a hoover or lawnmower noise. One of them, Blackie, used to really like Eddie and would come up to sniff him. Then popcorn away when he got barked at!

Our dog now, Chester, has never barked at them or chased them. He sits patiently waiting for me to drop some cucumber or pea flakes.

All dogs are different.

Safety measures only work if nobody forgets them. For example leaving doors open. We are only human after all.

If you want your piggy downstairs with you free roaming then I don’t think it will work.

Good luck with your decision
 
Sorry to hear about your grandma.

My dog has an extremely high prey drive (Siberian husky). He wants to hunt and catch all small furries!
We still have two guinea pigs. They have their own room behind a locked door. My dog doesn’t come in to contact with them. Not only because of his prey and hunting instincts, but because he socialises with lots of other dogs and I don’t want to risk a bordetella infection (lethal to piggies).

I had guinea pigs already, when I got my dog.

Sure when we first put them in that room , he showed a lot of interest in the room and the door. But over time, and with positive reinforcement he’s honestly not interested in that room any more. I can enter the room and he will sit in the hall way and wait for me to come back out.

Of course, I bet he dreams of getting in there and hunting some piggies, but he knows that he’s not allowed in there and doesn’t make a fuss about it.

There’s absolutely no reason why having a dog and piggies can’t work. With safety and good dog training in place
 
So sorry about your gran and hope you can find solution as a family.

I have multi-animal household. If you have separate rooms, it can work. But I would never let them be together unsupervised. Not worth the risk.

You could always add baby gate at bottom of the stairs to stop the dog getting upstairs to where piggie is. This adds extra layer and also stops any scratching at the piggies room door.
My dog is JRT and had dobbie as well. C&C cages are upstairs, on stands and with lids on. So only really need to keep cats away.
Only time anyone reacted was when I had a baby pig, they never seen one that small. So when he ran they would all double-take. So it was a case of no baby piggie in outdoor run until he got chubbier and less rat-looking :))

Unfortunately, finding a rescue space for a dog in UK is extremely difficult right now and every rescue has super long waiting lists due to the amounts being abandoned and given up. So either way, family has to step in to help. There's charity called The Cinnamon Trust that helps families with dog walking and foster whilst owner is unwell. There's also 'Home for Life' elderly are encouraged to sign up if they don't have family that can look after their beloved pets.

You can try 'scent swap'- get a blanket that smells of your piggies and let the dog interact with it to give you an idea. This isn't guarantee as it's not fast moving rodent= triggering a chase response. But can spot if you have 'obsessive' sniffing going on. Just don't make it into a 'game'. Simply put it on a sofa and see how he behaves around it.
Not all Patterdales are the same. Working in a rescue kennels I met anything from one that literally caught a mouse on a walk (one second- head in a bush) to a complete couch potato that just wanted belly rubs.
He also sounds like he has been around farm animals, so that's a good start and shows he can settle with right techniques.
Research positive reinforcement, counterconditioning and desensitisation. In fact, your piggies's bar biting is a learned behaviour reinforced by you letting her get floor time. They play us well!
 
Dog trainer here! You have been given some great piggie advice - I'd just like to add to the dog side of things... Given that Patterdales are bred to hunt (literally "programmed" into their DNA), it really comes down to whether you are practically able to put in the effort to make this work. Of course, as @Hath as mentioned, not all dogs are behaviourally the same. A lot of a dog's behaviour is dependent on their up-bringing, previous training, age, sex, environmental factors, health, etc., but there will always be that potential to slip into natural breed tendencies. However, I'm sure you'll be able to make this work if you can get the household on board to restrict the dog's access to your piggies and also put in some effort to do some training with him/her as well, because, realistically, management is bound to fail at some point.
If you have the time and patience a training exercise I would highly recommend is actually encouraging the dog to chase something appropriate (e.g. flirt pole, ball, etc.), since this will allow him/her to have an appropriate outlet for those natural behaviours, and then you can get that behaviour under control (have a "get it" cue, then practice recalling away from the toy). All the best! ☺️
 
Daisy_and_Mocha said:
Dog trainer here! You have been given some great piggie advice - I'd just like to add to the dog side of things... Given that Patterdales are bred to hunt (literally "programmed" into their DNA), it really comes down to whether you are practically able to put in the effort to make this work. Of course, as @Hath as mentioned, not all dogs are behaviourally the same. A lot of a dog's behaviour is dependent on their up-bringing, previous training, age, sex, environmental factors, health, etc., but there will always be that potential to slip into natural breed tendencies. However, I'm sure you'll be able to make this work if you can get the household on board to restrict the dog's access to your piggies and also put in some effort to do some training with him/her as well, because, realistically, management is bound to fail at some point.
If you have the time and patience a training exercise I would highly recommend is actually encouraging the dog to chase something appropriate (e.g. flirt pole, ball, etc.), since this will allow him/her to have an appropriate outlet for those natural behaviours, and then you can get that behaviour under control (have a "get it" cue, then practice recalling away from the toy). All the best! ☺️
Click to expand...

LOVE LOVE LOVE ALL THE ABOVE and excited their is a fellow dog trainer on here!
 
Food for thought,
I have three dogs, eight pigs (they're addictive, I take any that people don't want anymore and occasionally the local rescue calls me when they have a pig they failed to find a mate for or has been there a while and I take them in no problems. 15 is the max I've had so far at one time. I dream of a bigger property and a herd of like 80 piggies 😍😍

Back to the dogs and pigs..
My 13 and a half year old great Dane X, Dexter, is a prey dog, i adopted him at 12 months of age with a few issues but resolved them pretty quickly. He loved chasing wild rabbits on the rare occasion he had the opportunity in his youth. Due to his size and inability to change direction at speed, he never caught one. It took me 12 months (So he was 2 at that stage) to be able to get his drive under my control, i.e recall him from prey chase (kangaroos were the hardest, and they're dangerous to dog and can easily kill them for those non aussie folks)
2 years after gotcha day makes him three years young, two years of INTENSE bonding, training loads of exercise. The bonding part was easy, he was a mummas boy instantly, he just needed some love after his rough start. We got 12 chickens, and he wanted to eat them the day they arrived. I told him to LEAVE (pre trained command) once. One week later they chickens were free-range and pecking him to get him off his bed so they could steal it (or maybe just on it coz they were now boss of this 55kg dog.)
We also had a damn with resident ducks. My now ex partner allowed him to chase them around the damn, as they would fly or swim to one side, he hated water and would run all the way around this large 50 metre damn. They would fly back and he would go around again. Was his way of lazily exercising the dogs. I thought this would encourage him to chase the chickens if it was allowed to continue. What do men do? Not what they're asked typically! Anyway, he never hurt a chicken, never chased or scared them, even bought one back to the herd that got lost one day. But a wild duck at the damn wasn't part of the family tribe so they were fair game. He never caught one either. Basically he would try to chase almost anything he got the chance to, but if I told him to leave it. He did, wouldn't bat an eyelid and would allow them to come to him if they wanted to be friends and they always did, he is a gentle giant that listens. But that switch could flick, all animals are unpredictable, even humans. But.. he has the front garden and front end of the house when we go out so the two younger dogs don't hassle the senior too much. The pigs in the front garden obviously were scared of him at first. But after a few senior dog naps on the grass, the pigs were able to approach him and check him out for a sniff. Wasn't long until they would curiously follow him around the garden, but act like they weren't if he turns around 😂.
It's been 12 months since we've been in this house with this kind of set up, if Dexters asleep, the pigs nibble the grass around him and hang out and rest near his stomach and legs, they even popcorn and zoom around his legs, he just stands there and looks at them like what are they doing?
He grooms them, checks where they are when they're hiding. I'm yet to catch a nose kiss between them on camera, it's almost like they know his doing a head count and they're letting him know they're there. I do trust him 100% and if he did flick, he doubt he could catch one and it would be 100% my fault. Not his. My only worry is he will accidentally stand on one. He has heavy feet, and his super stompy now his so old 😂

Staffy one: people pleaser, wants to be a terrier but isn't 100% sure how. He corned a rabbit and looked around like... now what do I do? And didn't even notice this rabbit use the opportunity to dart between his legs. His muzzle trained so I put a muzzle on for safety and lead him around a few times a day and let him watch them. I have great confidence he could be a guardian dog to the pigs, his showing great potential. But I don't think I'll even risk leaving him unattended with them. His self control isn't as good, his 7 and we rescued him 2 years and he come with MAJOR issues, still a work in progress but he is so much better and happier now!

Staffy two: my beautiful conniving, loving, too smart for her own good almost 4 years old. She's a sweet.. smart.. calculated little b!tch, in both forms. I love her to death... but I will NEVER trust her with the pigs. She knows she not allowed where they are, she's not allowed in their shed and she's not allowed in the study where I bring them in for cuddles, training etc. I can leave the door open and she won't go in. But the moment we leave the house.. she checks EVERYTHING! we watch her on the cameras check if all gates and doors are shut, twice. She knows she wants to kill and she knows she can't do it while we're around. So when I'm cleaning pens and bring them in and out etc, she goes in her crate with a long chew treat (she's crate trained and loves it, she's not unhappy in there, and she would be doing the same thing anyway, just sitting around 😂) so I play it extra safe and lock her away

So depends on the dog and how much effort and time you're willing to put into the dog. Crate training them before piggie intros is a great way to start introducing and getting a feel of how the dog might be around them.

Each dogs different!
 
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