The Golden Cattle Dog is keeps many traits of a standard Herding Breed. The herding instinct is merely a modified (i.e. controlled) prey drive.
Keeping this in mind, one must approach the subject of the introduction to cohabitation of Golden Cattle Dogs and other animals with gental strenth and caution.
Golden Cattle Dogs are born pre-wired to chase things that move fast and nip at them. This is instinctual, it's not a learned trait. The urge to "heel" a fast moving thing (be it another animal or a bicycle) can be curbed and can be diverted but it cannot be totally extinguished. Most other small companion animals are small and they move fast. You must teach your GCD that these small animals are fradgle and need gental play and that it is not okay to chase them. Caution need to be taken during training, especially with a young dog. While an GCD nip is non-injurious to the bovines they were bred to heel, a nip on the "heels" of a cat or a bunny could possibly lead to serious injury.
With smaller animals (cats, ferrets, reptiles, rabbits, hamsters, birds, etc.) the key thing is TRAINING your Golden Cattle Dog that chasing and nipping said animal is completely unacceptable. Even puppies that chase just in play can harm a smaller animal accidentally. Obviously overriding the heeling instinct in a Cattle Dog takes a lot of diligence, remember you are the pack leader.
Until you are 100% sure that your GCD will not actually harm other smaller animals you would be wise not to leave them alone unattended.
That all said, all of our GCDs have been raised around cats and other small and large animals and they have accepted all of them (regardless of size) into the family. I believe that my cats are more concerned with being over groomed than any of my GCDs actually harming them.
