Dog and budgies

pampootie

Hello all,
I have a 10 month old jack russell and most things are going very well, but we're having one problem. We have two budgies which we keep in our kitchen, where the dog sleeps also. Up until he was 6 or 7 months he ignored them for the most part. However since then he's started growling and jumping at the cage quite a bit, which scares the poor birds. He never does it at night, he ignores them totally when they're quiet but any time during the day when they fly around or make noise it sets him off. We always tell him no and put him outside for a time out when he does it but it doesn't seem to make any difference! If we're in the kitchen and they make noise but he doesn't react i give him a treat. He was so quick to learn everything else that I feel this is probably just hardwired into his dog brain that birds=prey and we won't be able to train him to override his instincts on this one, so i want to take the simplest option and move the birds somewhere else in the house. But my boyfriend is insistent that he wants to train the dog out of the habit instead! Any advice? Do you think it's possible to train him and is there any other method you recommend as what I'm doing clearly doesn't work! Cheers.

Sigma Force

Don't want to sound like a grump but budgies shouldn't be kept in a kitchen anyway, it's not safe with cooking (mainly with non-stick pans) and all the strong smells (sometimes smoke if someone hasn't cleaned the oven) etc. Not healthy for the birds at all so it's best to move them anyway. If not already zooplus have a wide range of large cages with wheels that you can move about in to other rooms which could be another way of solving it, keeping the birds away from strong fumes and out of sight of the dog during the day.

Some may disagree with me but terriers being terriers I don't think can be trusted around prey animals if they already show signs of wanting a snack or just chasing them. I know I don't trust my dogs around our tiel or any smallies that come visit.