I adopted a 2 year old German Shepherd/Border Collie mix from the shelter 2 and a half years ago. I have no idea what kind of background she had, but from what I've seen, it's not good. Charlie was in heat when I got her and had her spayed right after. The vet said that by her uterus and mammory chain, he would guess that she had had puppies before. She also has a shot gun bullet in her neck (nice, huh?). I've also noticed that she knows how to herd and hunt - she herds my cats around, and will chase squirrels, ducks, etc. However, she has always been great with the cats, birds, and other dogs in the household. Charlie is very protective of them - she'll keep between the birds and cats, a dog and a bowl of food that doesn't belong to that dog, and just loves acting like a mom. When I started fostering kittens and cats, I thought it would be a good idea to allow them to socialize with her to get used to dogs. I had a young group of kittens, and she would even allow them to "nurse" on her.
One day, I had a litter of 3 kittens in with me and Charlie, and my cell phone started ringing. Charlie was asleep at one end of the room, and the 3 kittens were sleeping in an open carrier in the other side of the room. When I returned about 3 minutes later, I found Charlie cowering in the corner, one kitten on the couch, and the other two dead on the floor just outside of the carrier.
Since then, the fosters stay in my bedroom and don't go downstairs, and Charlie is kept in the bathroom when nobody is with her.
Is there anything that I can do so that I can trust her again? I'm even worried about leaving her with my 2 adult cats, who she has been with for several years.
Right now, Charlie has gone to live with my parents because I just don't trust her anymore, and I don't think it's fair to keep her locked in a bathroom half the day. Unless there is anything to do to help her, I don't know if I want her back. :(
Any ideas? Thanks.

If the killing of the kittens was fairly recent, since she was 3, it may be part of her mature, adult personality. It would take a long time, with you afraid to turn your back for a minute, to ever trust her again. If your parents are happy to have her, I would leave her there, and concentrate on fostering the kittens. I am sure there is no end of need for that. I see people that foster unwanted pets as true heroes.

I also spoke to Cesar (see my 12/20/04 posting under "8 month old puppy still pooping in crate") about this problem with Charlie. I learned a lot about what may have happened that day and am feeling much better about it. It will take a long time to get back to the way things were, but at least I know it is possible. Here's what he said:
Because Charlie has been a wonderful, mothering, nurturing dog for years (she is now 5 years old), there is really no realistic possibility that she would just suddenly turn into a cat-killer - in fact, he doesn't think she IS a cat-killer. First, she left one kitten alive (not to mention the other million cats/kittens in the home at the time), which she would not have done if she was on a killing spree. Second, she would not have quickly killed the two and just left them if she was doing it out of hunting instinct - she would have stood over them, carried them around, etc.. Third, if she had done it out of aggression or something wrong psychologically, she would not have known she had done anything wrong - in this case, I found her trembling in the corner, so she knew she had done something bad and was upset about it. He thinks that what happened is this: Charlie noticed the three babies wondering around and panicked. She tried to get them back to a safe place (and managed to get one safely onto the couch), but was too rough and accidentally killed the two. He said that mother dogs commonly kill their pups on accident in the same manner. When she realized that the two kittens were dead, she became confused and depressed, and that's why she went to the corner shaking.
Cesar believes that Charlie can be trusted again. She did not attack and intentionally kill the 2 kittens. What happened was purely by accident. The real process is not about training or working with Charlie, but is actually with me - having to learn to trust Charlie again.
So, one step at a time, I am going to slowly reintroduce Charlie to the kittens in my home and increase the time that she can be with them as I feel comfortable. I don't know that I'll be able to leave Charlie out with the kittens alone again, in case of another accident, but I will let her be with them when I'm with her. I am very nervous about it, but I agree with Cesar, and I will try to trust Charlie again.

Although fostering Kittens is a noble thing to do, you have taken on a huge responsibility when you adopted Charlie. You need to make a decision which is more important to you, these kittens or charlie. Dog's I am sure you know can establish an attachment to people very well and a dog that has a hard background may even attach himself even stronger than normal. Shipping Charlie back and forth and wondering if you can trust him is not fare to him. Maybe you should think a little more about Charlie and a little less about you. You brought him home now it is time to do right by him because he deserves at least that much. If you can't do that then you might want to consider putting him to sleep. I adopted a Lab mix about 11 years ago he had been abused severely by his ex-owner and was a mess. After a few months of constantly working together I noticed KB was always everywhere I went always one step away and very protective. I was sent overseas for a year and while I was gone my wife told me that KB was really depressed and would sit outside my window and whine and howl all day and night thinking I was in the bedroom. After about 7 months my wife got up and went outside to play with KB and found him dead in the backyard. The Vet said there was no real reason for KB to have died. No sickness it wasn't an accident of any kind. KB just died. I have always felt terrible for that and thought if I had realized that KB was having such a hard time with me not around It would have been better for KB to have been put down because the last 7 months of KB's life must have been awful. I would have felt terrible but not as bad as the suffering KB had to go through while I was away.

Despite so much of the garbage I read, I try to keep myself in the learning mode, willing to see if new ideas better explain things than the old. That accidental killing makes a lot of sense. Maybe we need to allow for dogs to do things accidentally, just as they need to understand we didn't kick them or tramp on them on purpose. I have always sort of wondered if dogs really want to kill cats, or just expect cats to enjoy the same rough play dogs do with each other. I am always very suspicious of those that claim to really know exactly what is going on in those furry heads. Tough decision.