It Happened So Fast!

Dogs, kids, and how to keep them safe together.

We worked hard to build a safe, fun relationship between A & Ed.

Most folks think that dog training is all puppies and happy conversations and simple lessons. It is, some of the time. A fair amount of my work is hard conversations, emotional detective work, and creative solutions developed on the fly, though.

One of the hard conversations I'd like to get fewer of is, "My dog lunged at my baby. She's been fine. I mean, she doesn't like the baby but it's been ok then suddenly this happened. I'm scared."

"That's really scary. I'm so sorry that's happening. How old is your baby?"

"She's 7 months old. She's getting more mobile."

"This isn't uncommon, you're not alone. For those first few months babies are little potatoes. They aren't moving and dogs start to feel safe knowing that the baby isn't going to come toward them and that they can walk away and the baby won't follow. Once babies start to move it can be hard for the dog. Dogs generally like predictability. Kids are supposed to be unpredictable. They're exploring and learning and doing everything for the first time. Nobody knows what they'll do next, and that's kind of cool. It doesn't feel so cool for the dog, though."

"Can you fix her?"

"Well, she's not a toaster so we can't fix her but we can help her and I can help you."

Then I talk to folks about keeping dogs and babies or kids physically separated.

"Most of the time we think that supervision means that there's an adult in the room with dogs and kids. The adult could be talking to someone else or reading emails or cooking dinner but that's not completely safe. When I say supervision, I mean that there's an adult who is actively engaged with the kid and dog and knows how to keep them safe. They know dog body language and they're ready to step in to prevent problems rather than react after the fact.

So, while we teach your dog and your kid safe strategies and I teach you what safe and calm and happy looks like in dogs, we need to keep your dog and your kid physically separated when you're not directly engaged with them and sometimes even when you are."

"My dog and my kid will never be able to hang out in the same room together? I see pictures and videos kids and dogs lying on each other on couches and floors all the time. Social media is full of little kids walking dogs and running around with them. Why can't my dog do that?"

"That's true and I could talk about it all day because I have a lot of big feelings about those posts. I'd love to educate the world about it. Some of those videos are really unsafe, some are just a moment in time and not the norm, and all of them are aspirational. I mean, I watch a lot of great farm to table cooks on social media and I'm never going to grow my own basil and make fresh pesto on a regular Tuesday night, right? It took me a while to make peace with that, though so I totally get watching those posts and feeling disappointed. An account that I really love that's helpful and shows realistic solutions and interactions is Dog Meets Baby. I recommend that all my clients check it out."

From there we make a plan to meet so I can help them learn about trigger stacking and dog body language and management. I might send them my free e-book about management tools to get them started.

What we do in that meeting and how we get started on training is a whole other blog post, or book even! Management, physically keep everyone involved safely separated, is the most important first step, though. If everyone took this step from the get-go we'd get fewer scary moment between kids and dogs.

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