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<DIV>It is important to do a lot of research if you have dogs and cats, be a
keen manager of space for each, and watch for "red light" behaviors.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Some dogs experience what is called "predatory drift", especially if there
is more than one dog in the household. What this means is that everyone
may get along beautifully, no problems, and one day the dogs chase down the cat
and kill it. Sometimes they just break the neck, sometimes it is
worse.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Fortunately, most bassets are behaviorally frozen into the tracking and
chasing aspects of predation, but this phenomenon is unpredictable other than it
is known that having more than one dog in the household can cause this to be
more likely (ie.social facilitation, one dog does something, the other dog joins
in and they get carried away).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I know someone who had a lovely old female golden retriever and a cat that
lived together peaceably for many years and then one day she came home to a
tragedy. I have had cats and dogs for many years and never had a problem,
but as I am studying more, I realize that I may just be lucky.
Realistically, how different is a running cat from a bunny to my
dogs?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It is important to either separate cats from dogs or that the cats
have a vertical getaway area or a cat only door where they can easily get out of
reach from the dogs. If my dogs are excited by my cats or chase my cats,
that is a red-behavior that tells me they are in danger and I need to do
something before tragedy occurs. If this is going on in the backyard with
neighbor's cats, then I need to go talk to the neighbors and let them know their
loose cats could be in danger.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Best,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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