Kids and Puppies
Firstly I want to state here that if you have young children and your thinking of getting a puppy expect blood sweat and tears! You would be rather naive to enter a binding contract of bringing a new family member into your home without a lot of hard work. It’s upsetting when people confuse natural nipping behaviour for aggression and if you are in doubt please contact a good pet behaviourist.
It takes two to tango and you should ensure you children are very dog aware and have respect for this new, scared, defenceless puppy whose only form of communication is with his mouth. Your new pup cannot say to you “hey, you know what these kids are really hurting me when they lay on me/prod me/whack a toy across my head!” they will do the natural thing and that is to nip or scratch, as their mothers would do to them if the pups were being naughty. Likewise your pup will not understand that this child is human and needs also to be respected, they will generally believe that they are its new playmate, so when a child is running around, guess what the pup will do? Yup you guessed it... chase them! And then to prove their gaming ability usually pounce on them slamming your child into the ground, the pup will probably be thinking “Yay, I won, your go” But your child is usually screaming with a banged head and sometimes bleeding by this point. The parents’ reaction? BAD DOG!
This pup doesn’t realise that it’s done anything wrong, and its really important puppy owners realise that! I’m not saying its acceptable for your pup to hurt your child, but it is your responsibility as an adult not to let this happen in the first place. There are a few ways you can encourage good behaviour. First off make sure your child plays an important role in training, exercise, grooming and feeding times. All these basic tasks will earn your child respect from the pup.
- Under supervision, allow your child to feed your dog.
- Never allow your child to disturb your dog from sleeping, however encourage them to nap together, thus teaching the pup to expect sleep-kicks and movement.
- Don’t allow your child to play tug of war games with your pup, I know it seems funny to you but the pup usually always wins, making the pup think he or she is above that child and is more in control.
- Encourage gentle games like fetch or treat hiding.
- Let your child brush the dog with your supervision, ensuring he knows the correct way to stroke a dog, this also gets pup used to being touched in strange areas.
- Whilst training get your kids to give commands, even if it means for a while you are standing behind him also giving commands so the pup knows what the child actually means. And allow the child to reward the dog for this too.
Never leave your pup alone with your child. No matter how confident you are, you never know what that happens behind closed doors, if the child gets nipped or scratched you will never know what caused the incident. It is extremely rare that a dog will bite an unsupervised child for no reason at all, there is usually a motive.
Unless your pup is perfect on lead, do not allow your child to walk him. If he pulls then the child will not know how to correct the behaviour and the dog will realise that when said child is holding the lead he can pull and usually run off. I would never recommend letting any child to walk a dog alone, until that child is at least 16 years of age! It never fails to shock me when I see a ten year old being pulled down the road by a dog… what if that dog saw another dog across the road, perhaps a bitch in season and bolted for her, who would survive? With lots of cars around? I doubt either of them… its sad but true, and I would hope that by reading this you will understand the danger you are putting both your dog and child in by allowing this.
I hope this article helps you to understand the pressures of having both children and puppies. Please do not attempt to own both unless you feel very confident in doing so, it is OK however to sell the kids if things get too much.
Written by Nats