New pup and cats, question about prey drive
Hi everyone. We just adopted this sweet 2 year old pittie girl from the shelter today. Its a trial adoption and we are trying to figure out if she is safe to be around cats. We have heard that some dogs just can't be around cats due to high prey drive and we are wondering if that is what we are seeing. I will say, we initially let them have too much contact, thinking introducing cats and dogs was similiar to introducing two dogs. That was our fault. We now have them totally seperated and will move much more slowly. When we first got her, we took her to the yard and let our cats into the catio. The catio is connected to a window in our house. Our cat came down into the floor of the catio and pittie saw and growled and approached. The cat went inside and pittie moved on. This happened again later with a different cat.
When the cats were sitting on the windowsill she could definitely see them and was watching them but not growling. She was able to be distracted with treats and calling her.
Later I took her into the house and she saw the cat and approached in a very eager way and sniffed. She got swatted, backed up and tried to sniff again but I had her on a leash and pulled he back.
Since being seperated, she has been hearing the cats meow through the door and does not seem interested.
Was the growl and approach/sniffing a sign she has high prey drive and can't live with cats or is this a workable situation if we move slowly? We need a dog who can somewhere down the line, exist peacefully in shared space with our cats.
We have another dog who was raised with the cats and she's never had an issue with the the dogs are getting along great.