Potential Issues for Homes that have a dog and a new baby

• Jealousy - "What is this new thing and why is it getting all of my attention?"
• Resource Guarding - "Oh no! It's heading for MY toy!"
• Instincts/Drives - "I think I'm supposed to HERD this thing." 
• Fear/Panic – “God save us! It's an attacking alien! Every dog for himself!”
• Dislike – “Here comes that brat with the pencil again! And she’s heading for my other eye!”

Jealousy

If “Sparky” has been the only “baby” in the house up to the point when you get a human child, he may see the new addition as something that robs attention that was previously all his own.  This is actually a resource guarding issue- He sees YOU (and your attention) as his and he wants your attention back.  To avoid problems, here are some things the experts say will help ease the transition of bringing a new baby into the home.

·  Practice “caring” for a doll, prior to the actual baby’s arrival

Show the dog that the baby is not a threat, and that sometimes you like to spend a great deal of your time holding, carrying, feeding and caressing the doll. This is a good time to stop talking baby-talk to the dog. You’re probably going to want to use this same language on the child, and unless you really want her to have to re-learn English later, you should train yourself to speak that language now.

·  Play tape recordings of a baby screaming and crying

Now is the time to find out of this is going to unnerve your dog—not after the baby comes home. See if you can get a tape recording of a friend’s child or infant squealing, crying and wailing. It would be best if you introduce the playing of this tape in a positive way, by passing out cookies to the dog each time you play the tape (and stop giving the cookies out when the noise stops).

·  After your child is born, bring home a blanket with the baby’s scent on it, for your dog to sniff and get used to (not to play with and shred)

You could wrap the blanket around the doll you’ve been getting the dog used to, also. The scent of the new baby should have a pleasant association for the dog. You might want to talk soothingly to Sparky, and say, “Baby? Smell the baby? This is your new sister, Adrianna. She’ll be coming home very soon.”

• When the baby comes home, Sparky will be extremely curious. Dogs are egocentric and may assume that the baby is something for them. In a safe way, sit down with the baby on your lap. Be prepared for any kind of reaction from your dog. Remember that unless the dog is used to being around babies, this is “otherworldly STRANGE” to Sparky. Being careful not to allow the dog to scratch or hurt the infant, let him approach, and invite him to meet his new “sister.” Reward gentle interactions with the baby (sniffing, looking with soft eyes, etc.)  If you’ve been using clicker training or other operant conditioning methods, I would avoid having the baby represent anything that can be clicked and treated for. In other words, you don’t want your dog to start a game of “101 things you can do with a baby” to try to earn treats! I would just praise and pet the dog. I would also not let Sparky closely examine any easily removable body parts, until he has become well acclimated to the infant.
• Try to involve Sparky in as many of the “baby” activities as possible. When you take little Adrianna out in her stroller, take Sparky, too. When you feed Adrianna, give Sparky something to do, too. I’m not necessarily encouraging you to feed him simultaneously. He may start getting the idea that every time the baby gets something, he gets something. This is not necessarily good, unless you want to try to artificially instill a concept of “fair” in the dog. Since few things in life are fair to the dog (and he hasn’t come to expect them to be), he would be in for a lot of let-downs if he thought that every time his human sister got something that he would also get something. He could practice going to his place and lying down for the duration, or practice doing “leave-its” with food that falls from the high-chair, or the baby’s teething rings.
• Get Sparky some teething rings and chew toys of his own. When I get shower presents for my friends’ babies, I always include something for the dog. How in the world is Sparky supposed to know that the child’s teething ring and toys are not HIS? And, what’s more, to know that you don’t even want Sparky putting them in his mouth? Encourage Sparky to play with his own toys and chew rings. If they have names, that’s great. You can ask him to play with “mouse”, or get his nylabone. You can also name the child’s toys, but if it were me, I supposed I’d name them all “Leave-it”, as opposed to saying something like, “That’s the ‘Baby’s Toy’ don’t touch that one.” To me, that’s just another way of saying Leave-it, which the dog should already understand.

Resource Guarding

Resource Guarding is a very bad thing. If you have not worked to eliminate resource guarding in your dog before now, you’re in deep trouble. If the dog thinks that he is allowed to guard his things, and use aggression to ward off people treading too near them, you need to seriously consult a dog behavior professional to help you with this problem, as it spells disaster when there’s a crawling baby or toddler around. Go on-- Call them NOW, before the baby starts crawling and toddling. Don’t put it off!

• A resource can be anything that the dog enjoys, including YOU, or being in close proximity to you or other good things. Anything the dog thinks he might want can be a potential resource to the dog.
• Resource guarding comes from Sparky thinking that certain things belong to him alone, like dog food, water in his water bowl, or his favorite chewy. If you’ve led him to believe this, I’m sorry but you’re both WRONG. Your dog needs to learn that nothing in life is free or fully his. After you put his supper down, you give him permission to eat it. The food is YOURS, until you tell him he can have it, and you can take it away at any time if you so desire. When your dog guards an object aggressively, he is saying, “That is MINE, and I’ll hurt you if you try to touch it or take it.” This spells disaster for a crawling baby or toddler, as they do not speak “dog”. Adrianna will blast right past those “warning shots” Sparky has fired by growling and baring his teeth. She’ll move right in until he has no choice but to “punish” her, which usually involves either the dog or the baby getting re-homed (you guess which one). It doesn’t matter that the baby taunted the dog. Sweet little Adrianna may actually pursue this activity intentionally, because she can CAUSE the dog to react in a certain way. Babies are exploring cause and effect, and when they have power to control something (Sparky’s very predictable reaction), you can bet they’re going to play that card every day. Pretty soon, you’re going to say to yourself, “Sparky just keeps snapping at the baby!”

This problem can be eliminated with a two-pronged approach. First, by seeing a behavior counselor and learning how to stop or prevent resource guarding behavior. And, secondly, by managing your child and dog’s environment. Make sure they are NEVER EVER allowed to be left unattended together in the same room. Children are relentless about taunting and torturing the family dog. It doesn’t matter if they’re old enough to be admonished not to go near the dog or the food bowl—they’ll do it anyway when you’re not looking. You can never trust a child NOT to do something that the dog will want to defend himself against. Be a parent, and keep a close watch on them, always. If I haven’t scared you enough, read “Fatal Dog Attacks” by Karen Delise. Dogs as small as a Dachshund have killed babies.

Instincts and Drives

Some dogs come in a package that was designed for specific work, like herding. They can possess the strong herding instinct to the point that they try to herd EVERYTHING—the vacuum cleaner, toys, the litter of puppies, and YES, your children. Sometimes when this instinct is used inappropriately by the dog on a child it results in injury. When a dog wants a cow or something to MOVE, so that they can chase or herd it, they bite it. They may also tend to nip a running child in their excitement. You have to be very careful to stop any early signs of instinctive behavior that could be harmful to your child.

• Herding Instinct is something so powerful that the dog does it without any encouragement or training. If you see your dog “eyeing” kids like they were sheep, you need to redirect Sparky to something more productive. Of course, there’s nothing like a good “Leave-it” to turn your dog from whatever tempts it. A sheep herder would say, “That’ll do,” which basically means, “You’re done, leave it alone—and don’t make me tell you again.” Unlike the instincts themselves, the commands to control these instincts must be taught to the dog. Early on, you must let the dog know that on no uncertain terms, the children are off limits as surrogate livestock for practicing stock dog skills.
• Other instincts that could rear their ugly heads are the “varmint killing” instinct present in terriers and the retrieving instinct present in sporting breeds. God forbid your dog should mistake your child for a varmint. But we really don’t know what Sparky is thinking, do we? Some retrievers are so compelled to pick things into their mouths that they are constantly grabbing your arms and holding them. If you have allowed this behavior to go unchecked, your child is in trouble. The dog doesn’t mean any harm, of course, but the baby is too little to fend off a frenzied retriever.
• Dogs with a strong prey drive can be a bad risk around babies. When they cry and scream, God only knows what the dog is thinking. Sparky may think the child looks a lot like prey. Again, I can’t stress strongly enough the importance of supervision. No matter what size or disposition of dog, it should never be left alone with a child.

Fear and Panic

To you, your child is the sweetest thing that was ever created, and nothing that little Adrianna does causes alarm. To your dog, she could be a two-headed beast from another universe, come here to drive us all mad. How Sparky accepts your child depends a great deal on how he was socialized to children during his critical socialization period. When you were 19, and Sparky was a pup, you might not have seen any point in introducing him to lots of babies and children. Now, you’re 25, with a new baby in the home, and Sparky has never seen anything even remotely like it. Chances are that Sparky will be quite terrified of this alien creature. Dogs handle fear in one of two ways. They flee or they fight. Sparky will probably try to avoid the baby, but when Adrianna starts to crawl and toddle, and can follow him into all of his “safe” places, he’s going to have to fight for his life against the alien invader. This is when most couples start looking for help and calling me. They have not prepared Sparky for a life with children, and now there’s an “invader” right in his home.

• Of course, the best thing to do to avoid this problem is to properly socialize your puppy to babies and small children during the pup’s critical socialization period (from 7 to 16 weeks). By this, I mean to safely introduce the puppy to all forms of babies (sleeping, crying, crawling) and children (screaming, running, playing, groping) in a neutral and friendly way, so that there is no negative association formed. There doesn’t necessarily have to be a positive association formed, just so that there is at the very least a NEUTRAL association formed, so the dog thinks kids and babies are no big deal. Done properly, your dog, at whatever stage in his life, when confronted with a child will say, “Oh, look—it’s one of those screaming children. Fancy that.” If you were able to do that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article now.
• The best advice I can give at this point is to NEVER let the dog and child out of your sight for even a nanosecond, when they’re together. If your dog is terrified by something he thinks is an alien who is going to kill us all, or even if he’s just a bit put off by the presence of the baby, he will be ready for the opportunity to defend himself against the monster. Everything the baby does will absolutely unnerve Sparky, and you must do your best not to let the baby “pester” him, as he will likely defend himself if he can’t get away.
• Give your dog a safe place to go where the baby cannot follow. A crate isn’t enough (the baby can crawl in after him, and that’s REALLY asking for trouble). The dog needs a partition or baby gate low enough that he can jump over, but the baby can not. The dog absolutely needs an escape route to another part of the house, where the baby can’t go. Sparky absolutely needs to feel safe, and not defensive, about sharing his home with Adrianna.

Dislike

Dogs don’t like being tormented, and babies are masters at tormenting dogs. The sad part is that the babies don’t realize that they’re doing anything wrong, and the dog doesn’t realize that the baby isn’t trying to be malicious. Even the most well-socialized, even tempered dog can be pushed to his boiling point. Any dog can bite if it is tortured enough. And, the problem with babies and small children is that they don’t understand the dog’s intent when he gives normal aggressive displays to warn the child off. Sparky might do several things before he actually bites, depending on his thresholds. He might just show his teeth. When that doesn’t work, he’ll growl, too. If that warning is not heeded, he may snap in the air (intentionally warning, and deliberately not biting his foe). And if the “warning shots” were disregarded, he escalates the threat to a bite (hopefully an inhibited bite).

Many times, this is the first indication that the parents notice the dog has been getting tormented. The child screams and comes toddling into the room holding up a finger, where Sparky left his mark. Shame on someone for leaving the two of them alone and unsupervised. If this happens too often, the dog is going to adopt a strong dislike for the child, and may look forward to a day when he can even the score by giving the child the thrashing she deserves. Obviously, there are no responsible adults in the household to protect him, so Sparky feels the need to take matters into his own hands.

• Protect your child from your dog and your dog from your child. Remember, you have a pact with your dog to protect him. If you fall down on your promise, your dog is left having to protect himself. You have to be willing to snatch up an approaching crawling baby, interrupt a groping toddler, and body block a rampaging child from trampling your dog. If he truly trusts that his safety is in your hands, Sparky will not have to worry about constantly being ready to drop a toddler in his tracks. Be sure to hold up your end of the bargain.
• Start at an early age, teaching the child to respect the dog. Show the baby how to stroke the fur without pulling hair, pounding, or climbing on the dog. Treat the dog as if it was the hot stove, or grandmas heirloom vase—you can’t touch it without an adult present and controlling the situation.
• Of course this goes both ways, and the dog must be taught to be gentle around the baby, but most dogs don’t have a problem with this. It’s usually easier to get the dog to steer clear of the baby than to keep the baby off the dog.

Lack of Supervision

The one thing I can’t stress strongly enough is that the ultimate responsibility is with the parent or guardian of the child. Dog to child interactions must be supervised constantly, and parents must be proactive in setting limits and making rules that will safeguard their baby’s well-being, as well as their dogs. When leaving the child and dog in the care of a babysitter or relative, you must be able to insure that these people will respect your rules and limits, as well. This is not something to take lightly. Your child’s life (and your dog’s life) is at stake.

If limits are set, children are trained properly, dogs are shown their role, and baby and dog are NEVER left alone together. A well-prepared parent will not have to send the dog packing, just because a new baby comes on the scene. Like anything else, it will require conscientious effort and diligent monitoring. But, soon, your infant will grow to be a toddler, and then a small child. With preparation, Adrianna and Sparky will come to be fast friends who will love and respect each other, and live in harmony.

The thing to remember is that the parent(s) is/are ultimately responsible for all interactions between child and dog, and for any mishaps that result from a lack of good planning or clear thinking. Children are killed each year by dogs because the common sense suggestions in this article never occurred to the person responsible for the child. The most important caveat is to never leave a child and dog alone together, out of your sight, for even an instant.