Introducing to other animals

Has anyone introduced their dog to another much smaller housemate? Can you give me any tips?

My corgi is 5 months old, I have had him since he was 13 weeks old. I also have a pair of sugar gliders (pics attached) that live in a cage in the bedroom. I want to be able to let them out of the cage without locking him up in a different room. I have been bringing him up to the cage and having him smell them and have him smell their toys. Today I let them out of the cage while my fiancee kept him on the bed. We kept a distance of 1 foot away the whole time. He actually did better than I thought he would. He was more interested in the treats we gave him than the gliders. He just get a little excited and barked a couple of times. I am so scared to let him too close to them, the other dog tries to bite them.

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Permalink Reply by CaptainCorgi on October 7, 2008 at 1:51am

We have two guinea pigs, both our dogs don't mind them, we have a Corgi and a Borzoi. My Corgi, Eowyn, doesn't try to eat them or bite them, neither does our Borzoi. The guineas' cage are where our dogs see them all the time and I've just kept the cage out where the dogs could see them 24/7. Eowyn's been seeing the guinea pigs since she was 3 months old (now 2 years) and is so use to them she just sniffs and pokes them with her nose when they are out and nothing more. We are doing the same with our Borzoi, he doesn't mind them at all. He's 9 months and we've had him since he was 3 months too. They both love to give the guineas kisses, lol!

Yeah so, maybe that's what you should, keep the cage out where your Corgi can smell them all the time and see them and he'll see them as a daily part of his life. Then keep up what you're doing with the treats when you get them out. So he associates Sugar Gliders with treats!

I hope that kinda helps! :-)

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Permalink Reply by Nicole on October 7, 2008 at 7:18pm

I was going to say the same thing. We've always kept our small animal cages on the floor so our dogs have grown up familiar with the little guys' scents. Funny, but Ein actually learned a valuable lesson about giving respect to the little critters and now gets nervous if they walk towards him. When he was a pup, he stuck his nose in between the bars of the rat cage one too many times and one of the girls bit him on the nose. The only time we've ever had a problem with him and small animals is when we were watching a ferret. The ferret was very playful and kept pouncing on Ein. Ein just didn't understand why it was okay for the ferret to pounce on him, but he wasn't allowed to pounce back. Personally, I think the reason we've never had a problem letting the small animals out to play is because the dogs are already familiar with them because they watch them and sniff at them in their cages. Likewise, when we had rats, they were never afraid of the dogs when they were out. They weren't even scared of getting collie-kisses. We actually had one, Ronin, who used to climb on Tucker's back. We have a chinchilla right now, and she's fine with them, too. We were watching my uncle's Springer last week and Pikachu wasn't even disturbed that Koko kept barking at her. She's been around dogs long enough to know that Koko couldn't get to her (we did put Pikachu out in the utility room just for sanity, though).