So for the longest time, my mom has been looking for a dog ever since she put down our 18 year old chow a few years back. A lot of grief happened since then as we keep finding dogs with great personalities but had to rehome them in order to keep the rest of our animals safe. This was back before the birds so our main concern was our desert tortoise in the back yard.

Now my mom has adopted a dog once again, who seems to have a really nice disposition. She's very friendly and for the most part puts up with my smaller dog who thinks he should be head of the household, so far hasn't really bothered the tortoise all that much, and is very laid back. She's only one year old so she's still young enough to act like a puppy, but she's not too overpoweringly energetic.

The only problem is, that she's a bird dog.

There are dogs bred specifically for helping people hunt birds. Not entirely sure on the breeds she's mixed with but you can tell by the behavior that she would probably be one of these dogs. Every sound of a wild bird in the back yard catches her attention, and whenever my birds do something while in their cage, she gets really excited. She'll stand there and just watch them, which none of my birds are comfortable with. Dudley tries to peck her in the nose, and Alex and Lucy his at her. Constantly.

I haven't been able to let them out for a few days, due to trying to get the dog settled in and hoping things would at least calm down. Don't want to have my mom give this one up. She seems to really like this dog, and is more serious about keeping her. Hopefully we can train the dog to leave the birds alone. If not I'll probably be resorting to putting them in my room for out of cage time. I might end up doing that anyways for a while until we can train the dog to leave the birds alone. The chances of that happening through are slim. I'm lucky that my own dog is more afraid of them then anything.

Times like this where I wish I had a bird room.

You can't train an animal out of its instincts, so even if you manage to teach this dog not to bother the birds you would always have to be vigilant. One wrong move by the birds at the wrong time could set off his instincts, and something disastrous could happen before he remembers that he's not supposed to do that.

Some bird dogs are only used to find birds and then let the human do the hunting, instead of chasing and grabbing the bird themselves. If you know what kind of bird dog ancestry he's got, you could do some research on these breeds to find out more about what they've been bred to do.

Oh I should mention that hey name's Dixie.

This is very true and is the reason why I've never let the birds unsupervised around my dog Bo. There have been a few instances where the birds flying have gotten excited. Bo however, stops chasing right when I tell him to. Dixie however, doesn't seem to have had any training whatsoever, and doesn't even sit on command. So basic commands are definitely a first step.

It's honestly hard to tell what kind of breed she has in her. Paper said sheltie mix but it doesn't really look like it. And upon thinking a little more into it, it's possible that there isn't any kind of bird dog breed in there, it's honestly hard to tell.

I think that every dog's got at least some bird dog instincts whether they've got any official bird dogs in their ancestry or not. Canines are born to hunt and birds are good eating when they can grab them.

I look after my daughter's king Charles Cavalier.....
Named Lanthii..... she is very aware of my birds.....
I shut her in the dog cage which is all mesh, and zipped,
she can see put etc, if the birds land on it she can't get at
them.... or what I do, is shut her in a separate room till
the birds are safe in their cages....
One slip on my part and she would have them.....
Good luck keep your feathered friends safe...

Well between then and now I have been able to let the birds out twice by putting the dog in a different room.

Lucy doesn't seem to care much about the new dog. Even when she's standing right there at the cage, one of the first things Lucy does while I'm trying to change their food is climb out. Alex on the other hand is terrified to come out of the the cage. I've had to grab her and take her out both times, and now unless if I'm giving her scritches through the bars, she's terrified of my hand.

She somehow managed to get all the wings pulled out of one wing... Again. If this is really from night frights, I'm probably going to have to start putting a blanket over the cage at night. I think she might feel safer being able to actually fly. Now if she can keep her feathers in her wings that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Needless to say things are a little crazy right now. Given how the dog likes to stick her nose in Dudley's cage, training her to stay away from the birds when they're out of the cage seems to be out of the question (unless if Dudley manages to bite her nose or something). So for now she's gonna have to stay in a different room altogether when the birds are out.

I'm surprised at Lucy for not being scared. She should be!

Never trust the dog not even 4 a min. Let birds have hr of play time or more while dogs in another room or outside.

I'm surprised too about Lucy not being afraid.

While she was outside one of our neighbor's dogs did manage to catch her. But given we had already informed the neighbor that Lucy was in her tree, she made the dog drop her before any damage was done and Lucy flew off. I would expect that to give her a real fear of dogs.

It's quite possible that Lucy's well aware of the fact that dogs can't fly. She's fully flighted and rarely ever lands in a place a dog can reach her unless she knows it's safe. Not to mention she's really good at flying and can go through some tricky maneuvering to make a quick escape. Alex on the other hand... Can't. Even when her feathers are in tact.

I let them out once again, this time putting Bo in the other room with Dixie. Alex did step up to be let out of the cage, but still tried to fly away from me whenever she got the chance. Of course she couldn't go far, and the only direction she could go was downwards. I think this time what she was afraid was of me grabbing her (which she absolutely hates).

She rarely let me give her scritches most of the time. Finally while standing next to the cage with her and Lucy on top of it (I now have their playstand on top the cage too), I said: "I promise I won't grab you anymore". Then Alex finally let me give her scritches. Times like these when I think Alex is smarter than she makes herself out to be. She's clumsy, accident-prone and doesn't seem to figure things out as fast as Lucy does sometimes, but she could potentially be intelligent. Just in a different way.

Still, she didn't want to step up or anything so I decided to just leave her be on top the playstand. I sat on the couch near the cage, and Lucy flew over to me (she's been flying to me by herself a lot lately), and eventually, Alex tried to fly. But given she only has one good wing, she just kinda glided/fluttered down towards me and slammed into the side of my face hard enough to actually hurt.

She hung out on my shoulder but didn't want scritches at the time. Then both her and Lucy started playing with the necklace I had on. Any move I made towards her with my hand and she would freak out. Eventually Lucy flew back to the cage and I managed to get Alex to step up to put her in as well.

Needless to say this went a lot better than the last couple of times where I put Dixie in the other room and let Bo hang around. It's kinda weird because Alex and Lucy both know Bo really well given that he's been here a while, and they both know that Bo is a bit of a chicken and is afraid of them more than anything, but I guess Dixie made Alex afraid of dogs now, which is honestly weird because even at Alex's breeder's house there were dogs, so the entire time Alex has been raised around dogs and has yet to actually be harmed by one whereas Lucy, who wasn't around dogs until she came here and risked almost being eaten by one, shows no sign of fear whatsoever.

Again, my theory is their flight ability. Lucy would easily be able to fly to safety since she's so good at flying whereas Alex ends up on the floor more than anything and would probably have to resort to hiding under things if she needed to. If she could keep that one wing in tact long enough to develop her flight ability, that shouldn't be a problem forever.

Alex's behavior toward you makes me think of the "terrible twos" phase that a lot of my babies go through, not wanting to step up or cooperate. Mine usually do it around the age of two months, but Alex could be doing it on a slower schedule.