Teach Your Child to Respect Your Dog
As your child develops, teach him to respect your dog’s body, safe zones and belongings. Always supervise interactions so that you can guide your child as he learns to communicate and play with your dog appropriately. Playing an active role in the development of a relationship between your child and your dog will benefit everyone.
Show your child what gentle, enjoyable petting looks like. Teach him to stoke and scratch your dog in her favorite spots. Explain that hitting, kicking or pinching dogs, as well as riding, teasing and intentionally scaring them are NOT okay.
Teach your child to play structured games with your dog, like fetch, tug-of war and hide-and-seek. Training games, trick training and clicker training are also a lot of fun for both kids and dogs.
Enroll your dog in obedience classes with an instructor who welcomes children so that your child can learn to be with his dog in a gentle, effective way. When your child gives your dog cues, be sure to back him up. For instance, if your child says “Sit” and your dog complies, help your child praise her like crazy and hand him a treat to give her! If he says “Sit” and she hesitates, immediately repeat “Sit.” If you do this consistently, your dog will learn that every time your child requests a behavior, you will too—so she might as well respond to your child and earn a reward more quickly.
Preparing Your Dog for Life with a Toddler
Many dogs who haven’t spent time around children find toddlers confusing and intimidating. Some find them downright scary! Read on to learn about what you can do to influence the developing relationship between your dog and your growing child.
Prepare in Advance
A wonderful thing about babies is that they start out not doing much at all and then become more active and mobile as they develop. These slow changes will help your dog get used to your newest family member gradually, setting both of them up for successful interactions. But before you know it, your baby will be a poking, grabbing, crawling machine! When your baby’s still young, start preparing your dog for a toddler’s touch, movements and unpredictable behavior.
Handling
As they explore the world, young children do a lot of grabbing, poking and pulling. You’ll eventually teach your child to treat your dog with gentleness and respect—but he won’t be able to grasp these concepts as a toddler. So before he starts crawling around, it’s important to help your dog get used to rough and even painful handling.
Poke the Pup
To prepare your dog for the way your baby will touch her, teach her that wonderful things happen when her various parts get poked and prodded. Use small, delicious treats, such as chicken, cheese or hot dog, to “pay” your dog for tolerating each and every slightly uncomfortable sensation.
If possible, dedicate a little time every day to practicing the following exercises. As you work with your dog, keep in mind that it’s important for your touch and her treat to happen in the correct order. The idea is to teach your dog that uncomfortable touching always predicts the delivery of goodies. That way, she’ll learn to look forward to it! So touch your dog first, and then give her a treat. These two events shouldn’t happen at the same time.
Poke your dog gently in the side or rump, and then immediately give her a treat. Repeat the poking five times in a row, four to eight times a day, until your dog feels a poke and looks up at you for her treat. When this happens, start gradually making the pokes a little more forceful.
Gently pull your dog’s ear, and then give her a treat. Repeat until your dog happily looks for her treat right after you pull her ear. Do the same exercise with your dog’s tail. Just as you’ll do when helping your dog get used to poking, do plenty of repetitions and gradually increase the pressure of your ear and tail pulling.
Pinch your dog, and then give her a treat. Repeat until your dog looks at you excitedly right after you pinch her. Start with very gentle pinches. Over two or three weeks of daily practice, work up to harder and harder pinches.
Gently tug on a handful of your dog’s fur, and then give her a treat. Repeat until your dog looks for her treat right after you tug on her fur. Then start to gradually increase the forcefulness of your tugs.
You can say something like “Oh, what was that?” in a cheerful voice each time you do something mildly annoying to your dog. Later, when your toddler touches her in an uncomfortable way, you can say the same thing to let your dog know that a tasty treat is coming.
If your dog starts to get jumpy when you reach for her, you’ve likely increased the intensity of your pokes and pulls too quickly. Go back to very gentle touching for a while. Only start to slowly increase intensity again when your dog seems relaxed and happy after you touch her. Make sure you also touch her in your usual gentle manner plenty of times throughout the day so she doesn’t decide that all touching is unpleasant.
Movement: Introduce “Baby Moves”
Some dogs have never seen a human crawl, so it can be an intimidating experience—especially because crawling puts a person right at their eye level. So it’s a good idea to help your dog get used to crawling before your baby starts to become mobile. Accomplishing this is easy! Crawl toward your dog. As soon as she lifts her head to look at you, pet her and give her treats. Eventually, she’ll start to anticipate fun and goodies when she sees you crawling in her direction. Everyone in the family should participate in this exercise. When your baby comes and your dog is completely comfortable with this new game, incorporate the baby into the picture, too. Have him sit on your back, supported by your partner, when you crawl. Continue to cuddle your dog and give her treats so that she continues to enjoy this strange, new human behavior! She should take it all in stride when the baby starts crawling on his own.
Resource Guarding Prevention
Babies and young children have no idea that dogs sometimes get upset when people get close to their food, chew bones or toys. Even if your dog has never behaved aggressively when someone approaches one of her favorite things, it’s a good idea to do some resource guarding prevention anyway.
Before your baby starts to crawl, start teaching your dog that when someone approaches her and a valued resource, wonderful things happen—and she gets to keep her stuff.
Continue to periodically do this exercise, sometimes just approaching to pat your dog while she eats, sometimes putting your hands into her dish and sometimes taking the dish away. Always give her a treat right afterwards.
Eventually, your dog will start to see you coming and happily back away from her bowl so that you can take it away and spruce it up with a fabulous goodie! At this point, ask other adults to practice with your dog as well. After she learns that anyone approaching her while she eats means that she’s going to get a reward, she’ll be much less likely to react aggressively if your unwitting child happens to approach her during a meal.
You can do similar exercises when your dog is chewing bones or playing with her toys. The more good experiences your dog has when people approach her and her favorite things, the better.
Teach Your Dog to Retreat
Many dogs don’t realize that they can move away from a baby when they feel tired or nervous about interacting. If they don’t know that retreating is an option, they sometimes resort to aggressive behavior, like growling, snapping or even biting. This is natural for dogs when communicating with each other—but it’s clearly undesirable if such behavior is directed toward your child.
When a dog growls or snaps at a baby, his parents wisely swoop in to the rescue. Although necessary, the removal of the baby is exactly what the dog wants, so it reinforces her aggressive behavior. To prevent this unfortunate cycle of events, teach your dog that she doesn’t have to defend herself—she can choose to move away instead. (Of course, until your dog has mastered the skills below, step in to remove your child whenever your dog starts to look nervous—before she feels the need to express her discomfort).
Walking Away Is an Option
If you’ve already taught your dog a “Go away” cue, you can use it to tell her how to escape from uncomfortable situations. If you see your baby crawling toward your dog or if you see your dog start to look anxious while interacting with him, say “Go away” in a calm, cheerful tone. Avoid sounding angry. Your dog hasn’t done anything wrong, and your disapproval will only intensify her anxiety. Then point in the direction you’d like your dog to go. When she moves a few feet away from your baby, toss her a treat. After some repetition, your dog will learn that when she’s uncomfortable, she doesn’t have to rely on aggression to relieve her distress. She can simply go somewhere else. Make sure, however, that moving away from the baby is physically possible for her.
Designate Safe Zones and Teach Your Dog to Use Them
Choose Some Safe Zones
Note the layout of your home and designate or create ‘safe zones’ for your dog. These areas should be in the rooms where you spend most of your time. Comfy elevated spots usually make the best safe zones because your dog can easily hop up onto them to get out of your toddler’s reach. One option is to simply put a dog bed, small rug, mat or blanket on your sofa. Or, if you’re handy, build a sturdy shelf or platform for your dog to use instead. Provide good footing by gluing or stapling carpet to its surface.
Teach Your Dog to Go to the Safe Zones
Spend a few days practicing the steps above. (Aim for two or three 5- to 10-minute training sessions per day). When your dog readily jumps up onto her safe zone after you give her the cue, start to stand further away from it. At first, just stand a step away when you say “Go to your spot.” Then, during your next training session, try standing two steps away. Continue to slowly increase your distance from the safe zone, just a step or two at a time. After a week or two of practice, you’ll be able to stand all the way across the room and send your dog to her safe zone.
When you see your child crawling toward your dog, you can start using the “Go to your spot” cue if you see your dog become nervous about being close to him. Periodically reward her with a treat, chew bone or stuffed Kong toy to enjoy.
The advice books are only a starting point
Yes, do the whole blanket-from-the-hospital shtick. Walk around the house with a doll and talk mindlessly to it. But it’s no guarantee that your dog is going to seamlessly tradition from life before baby to the new nuclear-family reality.
Let’s face it: Dogs are smart. They know the doll isn’t a baby. But what they do know is that everything in their world is changing: As your pregnancy progresses, everything about you starts to morph, from your gait to your hormones to your routine. New furniture shows up. Rooms get rearranged. Your anxiety level peaks.
Any major life change requires an adjustment period, and dogs are no different. Just assume that this will be the case, and provide your dog the space – both mental and physical – to figure things out. When things get hectic, or out of control, give your dog crate time with a good chewie. Don’t expect the Normal Rockwell painting out of the gate; for the first few months, it may be more paint by numbers.
Babies and kids make people emotional – no way of getting around that. Fledgling grandmothers who in other aspects of their lives are unflappable turn into frantic Oracles of Delphi when your pooch so much as looks sideways at the new arrival.
Amid all the confusion and exhaustion of a new baby, it’s easy to let other people get into your head. If it’s an experienced dog person, that’s one thing. But if it’s someone whose sum total exposure to canines is a collection of German bisque Dachshunds, then keep that in perspective. People who understand dogs understand canine body language and instincts; people who don’t are liable to misinterpret even friendly gestures – “He’s LICKING HER! Oh, my God, HE’S LICKING HER!” – and can offer some rather insane advice.
Last week, on a visit to the periodontist, the chairside chatter turned to the assistant’s newborn granddaughter, who was coming home from the hospital later that week. Concerned that the family dog was not going to accept the baby readily, the plan was to tranquilize him. I almost swallowed my cotton batting, and when I could come up for air I pointed out that this was a supremely bad idea; in fact, being woozy and out of control of his own body likely would put the dog more on edge, not less.
Dogs read your body language, your pheromones – and, the animal communicators would say, your thoughts. If you are anxious and worried about your dog’s reaction to the baby, you are in a sense encouraging him to be. Find that sweet spot between vigilant and freaked out. Practice feeling it. Practice breathing normally and not holding your breath when the two are in the room together – that’s the first sign to your dog that there is something to be worried about.
Don’t run film loops in your head about the worst-case scenarios. Do try to envision a calm, serene encounter. This sounds simple, and in theory, it is, but in practice, it can be the most daunting hurdle you face, especially if you have a dog who’s having difficulty with the new-baby transition.
The most important thing to remember with anything involving dogs, or kids – or dogs and kids together – is that you can’t expect a finished product right out of the gate. Plan out your encounters between dog and child – no matter what the age – and start simple: Create tiny successes and build from there.
In my Blitz’s case, he exhibited a whole spectrum of emotions, starting first with excitement, leaping and snuffing. When he smelled the babies through the bars of the crib, he breathed their scent in so deeply he sounded like an Electrolux. Once the novelty wore off, and the babies became a fixed part of our routine, then bewilderment set in. He was fine as long as they didn’t touch him. Once they did, the panicked looks and grumbling started.
We dealt with his behavior in a number of ways. To help center his emotions gently and without drugs, I added some appropriate flower essences to his water, like Walnut for dramatic life changes, Mimulus for fear and Rescue Remedy to kick it up a notch. (In my experience, when I have found the individual essences that work, adding Rescue Remedy often amplifies their results.) Whenever Blitz was around the babies and reacted without fear or concern, he’d get a click and a treat. To encourage him to make contact with them, I’d balance a piece of string cheese on, say, the baby’s blanket-swaddled feet. (He was the gentlest dog when taking food – don’t try this with a chomper.)
Corrections don’t work when fear or anxiety is at the root of the problem; they only make things worse. But if I did hear a grumble when I sat beside Blitz on the couch with a baby and bottle, he was calmly but firmly ejected from his spot.
Fast forward five or so years later. Blitz was sleeping in the front parlor; my baby sitter was playing a boisterous game of tag with the kids, chasing them around the kitchen island. When their delighted screams reached his ears, he bounced off the couch, trotted over to the babysitter, and took her forearm gently between his powerful jaws. She stopped, the kids’ screaming died down, and he released her, without so much as a tooth mark. Rather than being taken aback, she was pleased: He was telling her, eloquently but wordlessly, that he was worried about his children, and she needed to stop their screaming. Now.
When those babies first came home, I would have never thought that scenario possible. But many dogs, like people, just need an adjustment period.
The books all say it, and its importance cannot be understated: Your dog’s crate needs to be his sanctuary, and it is off-limits to kids. I can tell you from experience that preschoolers think a crate is the coolest kind of playhouse; it’s small, it’s snug, it’s forbidden, and therefore irresistible.
I reserve the sternest kind of rebuke for any kind of messing around with the dogs’ crates – not only going in them, but opening them without permission. My children grew up understanding that letting a dog out of his crate at the wrong time could have serious consequences. Being a multi-dog household with frequent visitors who don’t always get along with the resident dogs – or who are in various states of reproductive readiness – there are cases where having the wrong two dogs out together could potentially result in disaster. I don’t sugar-coat it – if you do this, this and this could happen, and that would be A Very Bad Thing.
Kids aren’t the only ones who can mess up in this regard: If you have babysitters, nannies, visiting relatives who take on dog care as part of their household helping, you can’t rely on them to be as vigilant as you would be. In those cases, a snap-lock on the crate with a note – “Do not let out!” – reminds them in your absence.
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Introducing Your Dog to a New Baby (The NATURAL Way)
When anticipating the arrival of a new baby, special care must be taken to prepare the family pets for the big changes to come. Here are some tips to ensure a smooth transition from pet-centered to baby-centered living.