Babies and puppies - how to start

I had a query recently from a dog-owner who was expecting a baby and wanted to know what she should do to prepare. This is a frequent question from people who think ahead and realise the possible dangers, rather than those who have a more happy-go-lucky approach to life.

The last thing you want is to disturb the joyful anticipation of your pregnancy with worries about what might go wrong!

But early planning is so good, to get everything ironed out well in advance.

The first thing you’ll need to do is develop the trust with your dog that his needs are met. Watch our free Workshop here on getting your dog to LISTEN! Lots of helpful lessons to get this going smoothly.

Once you’re “all on the same side”, it’ll be easier to make the changes you need.

So here are some specific ideas for you to be constructive in this waiting time and build up to the new life for your dog with love.

Change!

Your lives are all going to change massively. If this is a first baby for you -you have no idea! And if your dog has little experience of babies . . . he has no idea either. Great! We start with a clean slate.

Any changes you’re going to make to your dog’s daily schedule should start to be introduced NOW, well before the baby arrives.

◦  Where do you want your dog to sleep?

◦  Where will you feed him, and when?

◦  When will you walk him?

◦  Play with him?

If you want to change any of these anchors in his day, start doing it now, a bit at a time. There’s no danger then of your dog associating the incomer with changes to his life. It will all be history and well-established by the time the baby arrives.

Baby gear

In the same way, start introducing baby gear early on. The pram or pushchair, the cot, the nappy basket - all these things will just be novelties in your home which your dog will happily accept.

As soon as you get your baby transporter, you can start taking it for walks with your dog. You can put a bag of shopping in it to give it a bit of weight. You may be surprised to find how well your dog walks beside the pushchair when your lead is anchored either to your hand which is pushing the buggy, or to your hip-belt. Never attach the lead to the pushchair!!

Along with this, you could get friends to stop and admire your bag of shopping, and reach over to touch it. Any signs of resource guarding (“protection”) in your dog you’ll need to address separately. You can read this post to get started.

Baby smells and sounds

A method many use to help acclimatise their dog to baby scents, is to give your baby’s blanket to a friend with a baby (don’t worry if you don’t know any yet, you’ll meet plenty of people with babies as you do clinic visits and the like!) and get them to use it for a day or two. Baby smells, including dribbles and more (!), will be on this blanket by the time it comes back to you. Just leave it on the floor somewhere for your dog to study and sniff. Leave him to it. The blanket could move around and find itself in the cot one day, the nappy basket another. It will become “furniture” to your dog.

And if your dog is very sound-sensitive, you can use recordings of babies - yelling, crying, squawking, whimpering - and play them when you’re fussing round the cot or pram. Background muzak.

Pay attention to your dog

Your dog has been used to life-before-baby. Don’t let him lose the freedom he’s always enjoyed! You’ll need to get out without the baby too, so take him for walks - or just play with him in the garden when the baby is asleep inside.

Both baby and dog will be sleeping (hopefully) for many hours a day. A lot of this time you should be sleeping too. But judicious management of sleep times can mean that there are few hours in the day when you need to be dealing with both baby and dog at the same time. This will enable you to give each undivided attention when it’s their turn.

What you can do is make sure that for your dog,

Baby = Good Things

 So whenever the baby is about, or can be heard, ensure your dog has a food-toy, or you toss him treats, or scatter his dinner on the floor for him to spend time hoovering up. These goodies only appear when the baby does.

Boundaries

Baby gates are essential for your new household setup. And you’ll be so glad you spent that effort in crate-training your puppy!

Your dog needs to have somewhere he can go and never be disturbed. If he can choose to take himself away from a situation he’s worried about, you’ll all feel much more confident. Always give him a bolthole.

There will be times when you are tired, stressed, sleep-deprived, the house is a mess . . . and there’s a knock at the door. If your dog is happy to stay parked behind a baby gate in another room while you deal with your caller, this is one less thing to worry about.

The same goes for when you need to relax. One of my clients who had done wonders with her very reactive re-homed German Shepherd Dog was being harassed by her well-meaning family during her pregnancy, with horror stories of dogs eating babies. They insisted she get rid of the dog. She was very anxious, understandably.

So I gave her a way to have her beloved dog near her while she nursed her baby, by using a baby gate in the doorway near her sofa. Her dog, who was well-used to this new system by the time the baby arrived, had no complaints, and was happy to field the treats she tossed him from time to time while she ministered to her baby.

After working this way for a while - and adopting the Baby = Good Things policy outlined above - Guy proved himself a star, and went from being on high alert to every baby sound, to relaxing entirely. Baby and dog got along just fine, and “Guy” was the child’s first word! I was so pleased to receive this note a few months later:

“I just wanted to let you know how things are going. Guy has been great and has really calmed down. You were right when you said that when we relax, he will follow. As soon as we felt calmer, Guy just seemed to realise that all was ok and that he didn't need to keep alerting us to our baby’s presence. We can all be in the same room together which is lovely. We put Guy in the kitchen behind the gate when our son is on the floor because we can completely control the situation then. After the baby’s bedtime at 7, Guy gets a piece of his old life back with us!”

Relax!

You can see there that the biggest change - after all the safety measures were put in place - was the family relaxing. There’s no need to imagine the worst when you are truly doing your best. There was a huge history of trust with this dog which was in danger of being lost because his family was suddenly acting so weird towards him. Once they changed that, everything went smoothly.

And they still had time to enjoy their quiet time with their beloved pet

Last Thoughts: photos

I hate to see those “cute” photos all over the internet of babies crawling over dogs. A basic knowledge of Dog Body Language - lots of links below in Resources - shows that these dogs are stressed, anxious, invaded . . . possibly an accident waiting to happen. Please don’t do this to your dog! And ensure he can always get away from babies and children whenever he wants to.

Want to learn how to get your dog to LISTEN? Watch our free Workshop!

 

RESOURCES

Blue Cross  

Family Paws

Doggone Safe

Children and dog bites

Dogs Trust baby sounds

How can your family dog teach your children empathy?

I have a reactive dog - can I get a new puppy too?

Rollo the Border Collie initiates play with Coco Poodle at 15 weeks - 7 weeks after he arrived!

Many people who have a reactive dog - one who looks ferocious to strange dogs - wonder if they can ever have a puppy again. And they wonder if their reactive dog would accept the puppy or whether it would all end in tears. 

They may long to give their anxious dog a playmate. This is a nice reason - but quite a lot of dogs are not very interested in playing with other dogs. Even in my busy household, play between any or all of the dogs only happens occasionally - and fairly briefly - and when they’re already excited about something. There are lots of smaller interactions going on, of course, but not necessarily play.

Whether this is the right step for you is something you have to assess with your individual dog. Most adult dogs will - eventually - accept a puppy into the home. Some take a long time, while others are delighted and bond immediately with the newcomer, their behaviour perfectly appropriate and gentle. You can get an idea from your dog’s reaction to a very young puppy by allowing him to see one - but your first consideration here would be the safety and wellbeing of the puppy. Early bad experiences can be hard to erase. So possibly a puppy held in someone’s arms, behind a fence, while your dog observes from whatever is a safe and appropriate distance where he won't bark and frighten the pup. 

So assuming that passed off peaceably enough, actually introducing a young puppy into the home will present its own challenges! 

If your reactive dog is one of those who is not keen on puppies in his face - like my Border Collie Rollo - you’ll need to keep them largely apart for a long while.  But it can all come good in the end, and Rollo is now totally accepting of the three younger dogs in the household, and often initiates play with them. When he’s had enough, the game ends.

Start the change with your reactive, anxious, aggressive - Growly - dog with our free Masterclass packed with ideas and strategies, all force-free

“Puppy, meet Dog”

So you may be surprised - and delighted - at the success of the initial introductions. But this is only the beginning! I just want to give you a little guidance going forward.

• You need to focus largely on your new puppy for the next 9 months or so. He’s only going to learn if you put in the flying hours!

• New pups should be kept separate from older dogs most of the time. Yes - most of the time. You can’t just chuck ‘em in together and hope that it will all go swimmingly. It’s easy to keep them separate because your new puppy needs to sleep around 17+ hours a day, so all that sleeping time should be spent in his crate, in a playpen, or in a separate room. A playpen that opens out as a zigzag that will divide a whole room is really helpful for when the puppy is awake. Last time I had a puppy in the house, the playpen formed a long barrier across the kitchen. The older dogs could go in and out of the garden, upstairs, wherever they wanted, but I didn’t have to worry about the pup’s safety if he annoyed them. So the dogs were not excluded, and could study the new creature in the secure knowledge that they couldn’t be molested by the tiny fluffball!

  And here's a great post about how to use a playpen for best results

• Remember that your older dog didn’t choose to get a puppy - you did!

• The general rule of thumb is that your new puppy can play with your older dog for one third of the time he plays with you. So if you interact/train/play with your puppy for one hour a day, that means he gets twenty minutes playing with the older dog - preferably in 3-5 minute chunks through the day. People gasp when I tell them this, as I can see in their eyes that they’re reflecting on the fact that at the moment their dogs have 24/7 access and are forever playing roly-poly games on the carpet. But it’s something you have to do. These early weeks and months are such a valuable time for bonding with your new charge - don’t waste them!

• If you leave the two dogs together all the time during this vital developmental stage, you’ll end up with a young dog who only listens to the other dog, and never listens to you. (Don’t be like the owner who said to me, “I wish I’d listened to you 6 months ago. Now we’ve just got two hooligans.”)

• Take time developing play with your puppy. Our play is not as natural as dog-dog play, so you have to work at it. Tug is a great game that harnesses the puppy’s instinctive drive - which all types and breeds of dog have - to locate prey, stalk it, chase it, catch it, and kill it. Taught properly this game builds huge impulse control in your dog. (And uses up loads of energy - yay!)

• Respect your older dog and make sure he always has space and is never pestered - especially if he’s not so agile any more. Imagine visiting a friend’s house and her children treat you as a climbing frame, poking fingers into your mouth and ears - no, you wouldn’t like it! Sooner or later your puppy will lose his puppy licence and your older dog will say, “That’s it! I’ve had enough!” and snap (or worse) at him. Ensure this can never happen.

• Make sure to have lots of private time with your faithful older dog, alone. As he is reactive and has his own issues and worries, you’ll need to continue your program to make life easier for him when out. While your training focus should be firmly on your puppy, whose developmental stages will fly by if you’re not paying attention, you’ll find that two dogs does not equal half the work (as you may have thought) but at least twice the work!

• Never leave the two alone together. Just never. Not just for their safety, but also because what may seem a bad idea to a lone dog (like shredding the cushions) may take on a different hue when a young ragamuffin says “Let’s! I dare you!” When you’re not with them, they should both be asleep.

• Remember that your prime task right now is introducing your puppy to our world and everything in it, before he reaches the age of 14-15 weeks. The socialisation window gradually closes between 12 and 16 weeks and new things met after that can result in distrust or fear. Follow closely a good guide on Puppy Socialisation, Habituation, and Familiarisation, and ensure all novelty is experienced with a calm, happy puppy. You know a lot about dog body language by now from your reactive dog: watch your puppy like a hawk to learn his signals.

• Don’t make the common and disastrous mistake of thinking that playing with your older dog at home is a substitute for thorough and careful socialisation! Your brand new puppy doesn’t have to meet dogs yet, but definitely has to see loads of them. All different activity types, colours, coats, ears - they’re all different and new pup needs to experience all of them. Carry him if he hasn’t had his jabs yet.

• And NO group walks for now. Reactivity is highly catching, so you want to introduce your puppy to the outside world with no fears and poor examples to copy. I wouldn’t walk my new puppy with my reactive dog till pup is at least 6 months (depending on breed - larger dogs 9-12 months minimum).

You have the rest of your lives together to enjoy a great relationship - between you and your older dog, between you and your new dog, and between the two dogs themselves. Don’t hurry and skip any of these vital steps. The time will fly by much faster than you anticipate.

Anything you may regard as restrictive at first sight will be seen to be just plain ole commonsense - and will become an automatic part of your management plan for your household.

Want a step-by-step guide to everything you need to know about your new puppy? Get New Puppy! here, and start on the right paw!

Once your puppy is about 9 weeks old and has settled in with you, you can start working through the Brilliant Family Dog series of how-to e-books. Everything is broken down for you into little steps - and what’s more, check the calm down book! Go get it now.

And hunt around the Blog to find help with Housetraining, Sleeping through the Night, and so on.

Want help with your Growly Dog? Get our free e-course here and get started!

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