My mom brought home a Maltese puppy 5 years ago and since then she has made the mistake of not training it properly to be social as a puppy.
She will often lunge at other dogs she sees if not on a leash, will snap at anyone who tries to pet her, and make these weird, loud, almost grotesque squawking noises if she sees an especially odd animal or if my mother leaves her in the car to pump gas.
Mom can't get her proper training due to financial issues. She (unwisely) brought home a new Persian kitten yesterday in hopes to help the dog, and while the dog was making said squawking noises yesterday, she was a lot calmer around the kitten today.
However, she just follows the cat around and stares at her. If the kitten approaches her, she will either turn around in fear, or on pretty rare occasions, snap at her.
I've found vocal and physical forms of praise to be pretty useless. The only way anyone seems to grab her attention is with treats, but sometimes she will smell them and instead of focusing on the cat/other dogs/people, she will just sniff out the treat until she can find it in our hands and whine for us to give it to her (which we don't do, but it still doesn't make her attention focus back to the problem).
I'm not sure what else I can do to help my mom's dog be better around other animals in general? Any advice helps.