- Joined
- Oct 16, 2018
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Hi all,
Some of you may be familiar with the Coffee/Maui saga, but if not, here it is in short(ish):
Coffee, 2, had since 6 months of age. Somewhat shy angel baby. Maui, 3, much more outgoing little buddy (she was shy at the shelter which is why we originally thought they would be a good match), got her in August as a hopeful friend for Coffee as I was starting school and now have 13 hour days out of the house. It’s been 3 and a half months. Both girls, both spayed. They do NOT like each other!
On top of that, Maui has some inappropriate urination issues (I know they are not medically related). Every time I think I figure out why, she goes and does it somewhere else for no reason (she literally just peed on my couch directly next to me while I was eating dinner). I feel like it could be stress, perhaps from not getting along with Coffee (although they are separated and Maui is the more confident one), but also am not sure because sometimes she seems to do it out of spite if I am visiting with Coffee or if she has been left alone during the day. I feel like if they got along it might help, but I’m not sure.
We tried introducing them slowly, but the face-to-face time was a challenge for them as they got into fights as soon as I wasn’t hawk-monitoring, so we decided to take a step back and put up a screen door so they could look at each other throughout the day but not get to each other. We’ve had the screen up for about 10 days now.
I’m torn between trying to take a step forward, and giving them supervised access again, OR, since Maui has urination issues already, perhaps crate training her and thus separating completely and then reintroducing. Thoughts? Advice?
Does anyone know how long the complete separation-to-reintroduce needs to be, and how separate “separate” is?
Some of you may be familiar with the Coffee/Maui saga, but if not, here it is in short(ish):
Coffee, 2, had since 6 months of age. Somewhat shy angel baby. Maui, 3, much more outgoing little buddy (she was shy at the shelter which is why we originally thought they would be a good match), got her in August as a hopeful friend for Coffee as I was starting school and now have 13 hour days out of the house. It’s been 3 and a half months. Both girls, both spayed. They do NOT like each other!
On top of that, Maui has some inappropriate urination issues (I know they are not medically related). Every time I think I figure out why, she goes and does it somewhere else for no reason (she literally just peed on my couch directly next to me while I was eating dinner). I feel like it could be stress, perhaps from not getting along with Coffee (although they are separated and Maui is the more confident one), but also am not sure because sometimes she seems to do it out of spite if I am visiting with Coffee or if she has been left alone during the day. I feel like if they got along it might help, but I’m not sure.
We tried introducing them slowly, but the face-to-face time was a challenge for them as they got into fights as soon as I wasn’t hawk-monitoring, so we decided to take a step back and put up a screen door so they could look at each other throughout the day but not get to each other. We’ve had the screen up for about 10 days now.
I’m torn between trying to take a step forward, and giving them supervised access again, OR, since Maui has urination issues already, perhaps crate training her and thus separating completely and then reintroducing. Thoughts? Advice?
Does anyone know how long the complete separation-to-reintroduce needs to be, and how separate “separate” is?
so I almost think it stressed her out more
