As soon as we got home, we devised a plan to slowly introduce her to Ruckus, who is sometimes wishy-washy about dogs. We put him on his leash and let them meet on the front patio (neutral territory) and she sweetly sauntered up to him to say hello and he hissed and growled. Okay, pretty much what we expected. But we thought they'd acclimate after a while. NO DICE. As soon as she was inside "his" house, he went mental.
We put up her doggie gate in the kitchen, so that she'd be locked in there and hoped that Ruckus would acknowledge that she was trapped and he was not and he'd get a nice little boost of superiority and take pity on her. However, we had to keep Ruckus leashed in the house to keep him away from the gate because he was trying to climb over and attack her. Who the eff does he think he is?!
After 3 hours of near-constant hysterics from Ruckus (violent howling, growling, and hissing), Maggie was getting stressed out and we decided it wasn't fair to torture her with a ruthless cat in a foreign house so I took her home. I stayed with her a couple of hours and she was pretty much ready to go to sleep, so I snuck off home for the night.
Saturday morning, my sister took dog duty and spent a couple of hours with her and then Ryan & I came in the evening and spent another couple of hours with her (until bed time again). Sunday I spent the morning with her for about 4 hours and she seemed perfectly fine.
I feel terrible that the poor dog not only ended up sleeping alone every night, but also was traumatized by my jerkwad cat. And also I have to say that I was frankly surprised about Ruckus's need to 'protect' us and his house... the upside is that doggie was coddled a little extra and my cat has never been more in love with me.
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