My past experience is that the cat/dog thing eventually works itself out, they all sort of find their places. Does the dog chase the cats maliciously? If so, that could be a problem, though usually dogs just chase them because they run. If a cat stands up to them they usually back down.

Poor Snickers. No advice, except give it time and it will most likely mellow. It probably works the same say as stepkids--lots of love and extra attention to the animals, but not at the expense of your relationship. And hire a pet-sitter and get out of town & away from them for a weekend if it gets to be too much from time to time. Huh. I guess that's a lot of advice for someone who has no advice.

get a spray bottle so you can break apart and squablles painlessly. Train the dog not to eat the cats. However, if the dog is just curious about them and sticking his nose in their business, let them work it out - and they will - even if there are scratches and such. They will either be friends or simply move around each other. The dog will earn scars on his nose like mine did. The biggest thing is to relax and not let the atmosphere become or remain tense, the animals pick up on it and reflect it.

UPDATE: NOW BOTH CATS ARE IN THE WALL.

They sound like two little chainsaws when the dog approaches the part of the wall where they are hiding.

I apologized for calling Snickers a bitch. It was the heat of the moment combined with the three oozing wounds on my hand and the total suprise of the attack.

My advise is to let them work it out. They will set up a pecking order, (which is usually with the cat dominating the dog) and I'll bet they come to a peaceful treaty. Nikita has had to get used to three dogs at three seperate times, with Benny being the most hyper-annoying dork ever. Nikita will literally reach up and hold Benny's face still between his paws and clean his face-fur. It's cute until I realize that he's holding Benny still with his claws and when he wants to quit cleaning Benny's face you can actually hear each claw popping loose from Benny's skin.
The cat's have found some refuge for now in the wall. Don't force them out, let them come out on their own. And try to discourage the dog from spazzing out when he sees them. Dog's really need to know where they fall in the pack so the dog will look to Dirk for an example to follow. If Dirk lets the dog know that he needs to ignore the cat, he'll loose interest eventually.

Hope that helps.

Give it time, sis. And give yourself time to adjust to everything before you start thinking about if you made the right decision or not. Re-evaluate everything in six weeks. You'll see that things are going much more smoothly and you'll feel better about your decision.

Have you let the dog sniff out the cats? It's a little traumatizing initially for the cat, but hold them and their claws and let the dog sniff away. Make sure you have a good hold of the claws so the dogs eyes won't get scratched (bad infections come from that) If he tries to eat the cats, that's a problem, but if he just sniffs and spazzes and chases due to running, I agree with others, it will work out. our dog, unfortunately, only chases because he wants to play, but he plays too rough...

Damn LJ! I posted to this earlier...and it was long too...erg. Anyway, here's what I remember from earlier:

I've tried this myself! That way the dog can get a good whiff without having to chase down the cats to smell them and get to know them, you know, butt sniffing and all. And this way the cats will see that the dog is not dangerous (unless he's trying to eat them) and they may be less inclined to run. And maybe if they don't run, he won't chase them. Jen and I had a cat who was too lazy/stupid/fearless? to run, and there were like 8 dogs around and none chased him. One annoyed the hell out of him because he was overly lovey (big hyper black lab that likes to cover cats with kisses) so he'd run from him, but not out of fear. We tried this with one of my cats, but the dog that was there wanted to eat her, so she scratched him in the eye...which can cause a horrible infection. So I must say again, keep a good hold on the paws.
If you want me to come over and help, I'd be glad to...if they ever come out of the wall that is...

Oh and I'm taking my box in today, with or without you :P

And the craftster site is AWESOME...but now I'm wasting time on the computer again!