Category: Common Problems ¤ Author: Victoria Farrington ¤ Title: Introducing Kids and Dogs ¤ Subject: clicktrain=> kids and dogs Barb asked for other ideas on introducing a dog to the wild world of kids. I'm assuming that because this is a first grandchild (congrats!), the baby won't be living with you and may come and go at stages of development that may surprise the dogs--whoah--now it crawls, now it has wheels, now it walks...It surprised me, too, at how fast babies change. Most of these ideas are things some people do with all dogs and but everyone in my family did with the belief that the dogs' behaviors had to hold up when, oh, a 2 year old is rolling on the floor with an ice cream bar or a toddler has its fingers caught in their beard hair. Without kids: Intense but no stress games of take and leave. My dogs LOVE to hear the words Leave, Off, and Here. That means I'll be offering really cool stuff some time in the near future. And because we've done so much practice when it didni't really matter, I've never said NO, Unh-uh or sounded tense about it. (You can easily freak out dog and child by getting nervous.) I started with the basic food in one hand and asking for backing up, then c/t. I kept at this until I could put a long delay between the Leave and the c/t--I went and got other good stuff. So they don't have to see something in my hand to leave what I'm asking them to leave. Then I put food on my knee, in a bowl on a chair, and on the floor. I started with pretty unattractive food--orange segments, potato peels, and carrots (which disgust my dogs). If they went for the food, so what. It was yucky stuff. Pretty soon they were less likely to pounce on goodies and they'd give me a chance to c/t for directing their attention to me. A target stick can also help: put a potato peel on the floor about a foot from the dog and as it moves toward the peel, slide the target stick in front of it. Even if the dog accidentally bumps the target stick, c/t and make the treat something yummy. When I started using good food, my dogs got a few freebies but if they backed away from it, they got jackpot good food and this worked well. One gives me about 20 seconds before she goes for the goodie on the floor, the others are more stoic and one will even bark to show me how good he is. By the time the food is on the hands, face or tray of a baby, the dog has had plenty of practice and knows how it all works. When you start with the kids' food, hold the baby's hand in your hand so there's no confusion for the dog. I did this when my first niece was actually asleep, just stuck a weiner slice in her little hand and quietly played leave and take with the dogs, always tossing the treat away from her. Do the same thing with toys. My brother taught his boisterous dogs a special toy cue by holding a toy in his hand and doing a version of take and leave--unless he said "catch," he'd withdraw the toy. Then he put it on the floor or a chair seat and did the same thing. Then he did it with his new baby when he was fully in control of what happened between the baby and the dogs. His dogs will lie down and whine in front of his little boy, begging to hear "catch" but they don't grab and they don't run around collecting baby toys that look like dog toys. One of my dogs loves squeaky toys. I taught him they'd never ever be delivered unless his butt is on the ground and we practice this almost daily because if I get lax it's not a big deal if he grabs from me or my husband but 30 lbs. of grabby terrier can frighten and injure a child who picks up the wrong thing. Babies come with a lot of stuff that can scare and attract dogs. Before ours saw the stuff WITH the kids, they saw a lot of the stuff WITHOUT the kids. Things like bottles, disposable diapers, diaper bags, loud toys, those contraptions on wheels that babies push themselves around in--these make a racket on tile or wooden floors, babies move at the speed of NASCAR drivers in them and paws get run over. It's better if you scare the daylight out of your dogs with one and teach them how and where to run from it before the baby does. My brother and his wife are conscientious at introducing all their child's toys to the dogs before the child gets them--as the kids get older, their stuff gets weirder and weirder: electronic toys, bears that sing, trucks with sirens, big wheels and bikes with training wheels, the dreaded Barbie car. Some of their stuff gets smaller and smaller so it's probably a good idea to teach your dogs to leave or retrieve tiny objects like Lego blocks, crayons, and doll shoes. (One of my dogs ate many of these things. Now there's only the occasional gulp...whoops.) In your house or when visiting, teach your dogs how to escape from kids. Even that it's OKAY to escape. SOme dogs don't mind and some are martyrs but some need help in finding the way out. My poor grandmother spent years teaching her Bedlingtons to NOT treat her furniture like an Alpine adventure. Greatgrandchildren and there she was encouraging the dogs to leap up on couchs. In my parents' house, the baby gates are for the babies. The dogs have been taught to jump over them. We showed Dash he could fit under the bed just by tossing a treat under there and sending him after it. Something big to get under or behind is a good idea because the dog can move away from little hands reaching for it. For the same reason, I close the doors of the dogs' crates when kids are visiting. The crates are for privacy. I've occasionally dragged my dogs out of a crate but I don't know if they'd let a 3 yr. do this without some kind of struggle. I also don't know what they'd do if someone tried to get in there with them. (And gee, I don't fit.) Do lots of Excite/settle games. Get down on the floors (knees permitting) and do some hair pulling and eye poking. Better you get a nip than a baby does. I've found that roughhousing pretty much takes care of the problem--dogs are good at recognizing "just in fun" but they do need to learn to pull their punches even in fun. Read Shirley CHong's terrific posts on bite inhibition. So if things do get ugly, the dog has had plenty of practice. My brother got his dogs well rehearsed, got very rough with them at times, even annoyed them. Then he taught them to mouth his little boy's arms. Two of his dogs are AIredales, his child is far rougher than any dog I've ever known and he figured that if the dogs learned an acceptable way to grab Brian, they would at least start with that and give him time to intervene. Whether they were playing or getting ticked off. It seems to have worked. The dogs actually prefer to just gallop off when Brian's too rough for them but there have been some wrestling matches that ended with everyone intact and confident. Whew. SOunds like a lot but my dogs needed to learn these things just to hang out with the other terriers in my family. And I consider them games we can play all the time without the dogs getting the idea it's anything important. When they started interacting with the kids, I tried to transfer as much control as I could to the kids themselves--standing behind them and holding a toy to teach the dog to back up, helping the kids give cues and deliver food at the appropriate moment, playing games with the kids and dogs and making sure I took the brunt of anyone's wild moves. As the baby gets older, try to do things with the baby and the dog that the dog enjoys--one of mine loves pulling a sled with a baby on it, another enjoys trotting beside a stroller for a walk. It can be easy to concentrate on the baby and end up with the dog having a boring or miserable time. And provide plenty of escape and nap time. That's always a nice alibi for those moments when YOU are exhausted and need a nap yourself! Oh, and don't forget little hats and little gloves. My mother had to put a little hat on a large teddy bear to teach her dog he couldn't steal those fun fuzzy things bobbing at eye level. I was very apprehensive about my dogs and our nieces and nephews at first but the only bad thing that's happened was the Christmas morning when Dash mistook Holiday Barbie for a chew toy and decapitated her. There were even more tears when Grandpa tried to be helpful and superglued Barbie's head on backwards. (Satanic possession Barbie?) Any sticky situations have ended peacefully I think because the dogs were comfortable responding at some level to many of the physical situations and objects. And gee, have fun! Sorry to go on so long, Victoria Farrington and the anti-terrorist squad terriers Dash, Shiva and Fisticuffs