Dog and Rabbit Harmony Issues

[Mac189]

I have long had dogs, cats, and rabbits living together and never had a previous issue with my dogs, cats, and rabbits treating each other with respect... until now. I'm in the process of training my five-month-old Labrador, Kate, who is showing extremely high prey drive, despite spending some, albeit slightly limited time around the smaller critters. Out of safety, I've never let her be in the same enclosure as the rabbits and she sadly became a member of our family after our 17-year old cat Skinny crossed the rainbow bridge, who previously had the confidence to make all of our past dogs small animal friendly.

I'm at quite a loss as to how to fix this, I've got zero tolerance for prey drive (for the safety of small animals and the dog) and no Lab we've had in the past has shown even the slightest hostility toward the small animals, with our 10-year old lab as the pinnacle of friendship with other animals. Does anyone have a safe method for me to train Kate that small animals are NEVER to be chased without putting any small animals at risk?

 

[Blue eyes]

That's a tough one. There are some methods you could try, however there are still some individual dogs that are simply going to have too much innate prey drive to overcome. Whether or not your dog falls into this category is something you will have to determine.

Of course, having the dog obedient is a necessary element with a more difficult dog. The method I've used in the past is described at the link below. The 1st step is done with the rabbit safely in its enclosure. Whether or not you will be able to let your dog get to the later steps will depend on how she does with the first. If nothing else, it will give you a place to start (safely).

https://rabbitsindoors.weebly.com/introducing-dog-to-rabbit.html

 

[Mac189]

Thank you so much for this link, it is super helpful! I'm definitely going to be using the acclimation method described, although I think I'm going to have to wait a bit for us to get out of the sort of psychotic puppy stage she's in right now. I think she will likely mature to a point of being more ready for this and there is certainly a lot of obedience work I can do in the meanwhile, but right now I think her energy is just too high and she is not yet concrete enough in her training to do this right and I'm not willing to risk doing it wrong. She's still so young and trying to figure out what she can get away with.

Luckily, the rabbits and I are in a place that the puppy cannot access at all without me very consciously letting her in, so I have the luxury of taking this as slowly as I want. I think I am going to invest in some training classes as well to make sure obedience is at 100% and wait for the teething era to end before really working on this with the rigor I want to. In the meanwhile, I'm going to try to direct chase instincts to be after approved things only.

Thank you so much for your help!