anyone with dog and cat?

[Birdsighland]

We lost our cat to cancer. While he was with us, I explained to my son that we couldn't bring a dog on top of him as I didn't want to risk him wandering off.

My ds is now pressing for a dog in our lives. I absolutely want to give a home to a cat as well. If you had the luxury of being able to plan the addition of dog and cat into your lives, how would you introduce them? Would you get puppy and kitten together at a gormless and trusting age so they didn't distrust/chase each other? If you were to get one first, would it be the kitten (who has maybe been reared in a house with a dog)?

Don't know when, but am thinking ahead and would like to pick the brains of those who know more about it than I do.

Any knowledge gratefully received.

I put a stair gate across the bottom of the stairs when Dog was a puppy so that the cats could get somewhere he couldn't.

Actually, Owl, there are schools of thought that maintain that you shouldn't give dogs any bones, cooked or raw. I'm not a veterinarian but we had dogs that weren't bone chewers so all that they did with a lamb bone was to gnaw off the meat and then put the actual bone somewhere in the garden. They always ate them under supervision though and the very occasional large lamb bone was all they got - as a treat.

We also have a stair gate so the cats have somewhere to go the dogs can't get and we feed them in separate rooms

...goes off to google Leonbergers....

omg, they are massive (and gorgeous)

Interesting. I was just surprised. Dog likes beef bones from the butchers - he eats some completely and just gnaws others. He also snaffled a roast chicken carcass out of the food recycling bin once with no ill effect

Cat and Dog are asleep on the same sofa at the moment, to get back on the original cat and dog topic :)

I have at various time introduced adult cat to puppy and puppy to adult cat. Conclusion : depends on the individual animals ! (helpful, eh?!)
Seriously - we got our pup last October. At that point we had 2 adult cast (one around 2, one around 10). Both instantly hated the dog - in fact the 2 year old cat (a Maine Coon - enormous - and we had been told by breeder would be fine with dogs) went straight out the cat flap and didn't come back for a few hours. Interestingly it was the older cat who settled first - and would lie close to the puppy. The puppy would be swiped by the cat if he came too close. Then old cat died and we got an 18 month old rescue cat - who was happy to tolerate the dog. 6 months down the line - Maine Coon cat had got to the stage where he actually seemed to like the puppy - would follow him around and on walks, sniff noses (and bottoms!) and walk between his legs. Unfortunately Maine Coon was killed last week. So now we only have rescue cat and pup - rescue cat has the puppy quite well trained - will accept sniffs and licks (and reciprocate to some extent). Will still wallop dog if he is too pushy.
To accomplish all this - we allowed the cats space - both individual space and space to retreat from the dog. If needed we put cat food dishes up high where the cat could jump to but dog couldn't reach. We did not allow the dog to chase the cats at all in the house. We used a dog gate with a cat flap to separate one part of the house from the rest to give the cats some peace. It takes quite a lot of effort but is possible - both the dog and cat rescues should be able to give you advice on suitable pets.
(our dog is a rough collie by the way - bigger than a Sheltie but not nearly as energetic as a border collie!)

We currently have 13 cats and 4 dogs (inc a 4-5 month rescue pup) and they're all fine on the whole. Some of the cats love the dogs and some hiss and spit but there are no major traumas. As we have so many we've had every combination of adult/young on each side and it's really never been a problem