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Nervous about baby

Mon, 08/20/2007 - 05:14 — riomaya

Hi Aidan,

Thanks for your help with my last post. I will post a follow-up to it to let you know how things have progressed. I now need some help from you or anyone else regarding my dogs and my baby. I have done everything suggested in my reading to make the new addition to our family as easy on the dogs as possible. They are normally great with kids of all ages and my husband and I can pull tails, ears, fur, hug them, etc with not even a blink from the dogs. They have been very gentle with baby so far and I let them give him a few licks here and there. My baby is now starting to reach for things and grab things and of course the dogs are very interesting to him. Both dogs are showing signs of stress with this. Yesterday, one of them even gave a yelp/warning bark when he was touching her tail. I don't think that he was hurting her, it is just an overreaction from her. If anyone else had done the same thing she probably wouldn't have even blinked. I didn't see what happened, my husband was supervising the interaction and his reaction of course was to yell at her for her warning. I asked him not to do this if it happens again so we can maintain the communication from her, and instead to try to get her to move away from the baby when she shows any signs of stress and rewarding her for increasing her distance from him instead. Is this what we should be doing? How would you have handled it?
I also want to start working on getting them to relax about him making physical contact with them. Today I sat down on the floor with the baby in my lap and took turns lavishing attention on them while holding him. He kind of reached for them a few times, but did not make contact so I think it was a good start. I plan on doing this several times a day and I figure that the baby will start making more contact with them as we do this and eventually they should associate his contact with them with positive feelings for them. Do you think this is a good start?
I'm also wondering about using food. I know Classical Conditioning works well with food, so I was thinking of treating them with baby in arms too and perhaps having baby touch them in a controlled interaction while receiving high powered treats. Neither dog is food aggressive at all and I practice routine maintenance of this by dropping tidbits in food bowls, removing food bowls and adding stuff then returning them, etc. Just wondering what suggestions you or anyone else might have to help me along the way. I really want to do everything possible to start this relationship off right.

Thanks,
Laurie

Comments

Fri, 08/24/2007 - 21:00 — Aidan
Aidan's picture

All sounds great!

Hi Laurie, it sounds like you have a very good idea of what is going on and what to do about it.

It is important for them to be able to maintain communication as you suggested. Reward calm, and reward attempts to move away. I think very young children and dogs need very close supervision.

I give my dogs the impression that our baby is boring. Not at all interesting (for them, anyway).

I suspect this will change when she starts feeding herself

Regards,
Aidan
http://www.positivepetzine.com

Sat, 08/25/2007 - 13:54 — riomaya

Thanks Aidan!

Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it. It seems like things are settling down already but I definitely don't want to relax about things yet. They both seem to be getting used to the idea of him reaching for them. I am praising them for moving away from him when he starts reaching for them. They both seem to think he is pretty boring for the most part I think, but they both like to be near me and that is usually close to baby as well. Any suggestions to make the dogs boring to the baby? Interrupt and redirect?

Boy the supervision of baby and dogs can be exhausting! Thank goodness for crates and a fenced back yard. I can't wait to get a few more baby gates in too.

My baby has already tried to feed them from his highchair, but their "zen" training is really coming in handy. I don't want them learning that they can walk up and take something from his hand just because it appears that it is being offered. After dinner is done though, then the floor is fair game. Saves me from a lot of sweeping.

Thanks again,
Laurie

Mon, 08/27/2007 - 11:51 — pos4015

"Any suggestions to make the

"Any suggestions to make the dogs boring to the baby? Interrupt and redirect?"

-- great question! I'm a complete newbie with babies, but I've noticed my baby seems to have a few core reinforcers, then a whole bunch of things that are only reinforcers temporarily. Interrupt and re-direct sounds sensible, but it's perhaps even better to teach baby how to interact with dogs. I'm not sure how old your baby is, mine is probably a little too young for that so management and supervision is about the only trick I've got up my sleeve that I could share.

"My baby has already tried to feed them from his highchair, but their "zen" training is really coming in handy. I don't want them learning that they can walk up and take something from his hand just because it appears that it is being offered. After dinner is done though, then the floor is fair game. Saves me from a lot of sweeping."

-- make a game of it, that's an awesome training opportunity. "Go to Mat" or "Down" for the duration of dinner, then clean up as a reward!

I've got instructions you should be able to modify here.

Regards,
Aidan