Making Nice with Baby
I am often asked about the mix of kids and dogs along with the age old question, "How do we introduce our dog to our new baby?" The answer I give, "Depends on your relationship". "Does your dog consider you the leader?" "Dogs and people are about RELATIONSHIPS in which the human is the leader and the dog starts as an unskilled follower", I say. Once you have demonstrated that with clarity, you then grow this into a Sr/Jr. partnership with more freedoms and privileges being earned by the dog along the way as he develops the needed skills. At this point, getting dogs to be successful in and around babies or children or any other new, unfamiliar or stressful situation becomes the benefit.
This statement always leaves most people with a puzzled look as most are expecting an anecdotal list of things they should and should not be doing. The most common of these is playing audio of babies crying; with the idea that the dog will get used to (become conditioned) the sound and his behavior won’t become erratic. Or, never let your dog get his face near the baby (avoidance), for fear he might bite the baby. While you can apply micro-management, avoidance and desensitization techniques, this alone rarely creates a dependable dog. A systematic training and skill building program combined with a temporary application of some precautionary measures as you achieve a certain level of skill in the dog,is far more effective and dependable.
I like to relate this to individuals who want to lose weight. These days, most people have learned to stay away from yo-yo dieting. They have learned this slogan of balanced diet and exercise is the right way to get healthy. While I would agree with this statement in part, it's far too general for most people to understand the specific components inside those pieces. You can still over eat on healthy food just like you can love your dog to DEATH. Diet is 80% of the answer to losing weight and being healthy but eating healthy requires practice. The other 20% is exercise. But what kind of exercise? How much? How often? Random exercise, like random obedience exercises and random lifestyle protocol without specifics is going to provide people with inconsistent results. And let's not forget the importance of coaching. Having a system makes success much easier to achieve goals as opposed to random or spot training, regardless of the subject. All training is not created equal, so buyer beware.
The difference between diet and exercise and people and dogs is that you have chosen to live with an animal. The dog is a living, breathing, thinking,
We need a dog that possesses skills for properly THINKING and reasoning his way through whatever the situation, in order to make a good choice, and an owner who possesses the leadership skills needed for that particular dog. Implementing a day to day protocol in which to live by combined with a properly coached obedience exercise curriculum is what does the skill building for both. It also teaches the dog to be responsible to something greater than himself and promotes a healthy team mentality. Thorough instruction and execution in leash handling is the key for this and becomes the dogs’ life line. It's this initial leash training that begins to connect the owner and dog as a team and aids in building a trustworthy, cooperative and safe relationship. When done correctly, it creates a stable, controlled and trustworthy animal who's capable of following direction and who learns how to make good choices under stress. This works perfectly for dogs being around babies and children of all ages and scenarios. So whether you're dealing with infants and crawlers, tail pullers, eye pokers and ear biters, all the way to young teens who feel they know it all, there is hope. Eventually, the child is going to do something to the dog that is uncomfortable or that the dog doesn't like in a setting that is beyond your control. The dog that has been taught to think before he acts and has skills for self control, turns and goes the other direction instead of correcting the child himself. While teaching kids about safety and proper interaction around dogs is optimal, we as parents know for sure, we can never supervise the dogs and kids 100% of the time. By teaching both kids and dogs, we increase our chances of success by almost eliminating all risk. Keep in mind, all training is NOT created equal.
As a parent to a five year old who has been raised around and by two American Pit Bull Terriers and a Boxer, people are shocked at first to find that I would not only trust a dog around a baby and young children, but THAT breed, I must be insane. But when I tell them the roles they played, they are amazed. Krom fetched diapers and put them up on the changing table whenever the boy cried and I carried him to the room to change him. Quinn helped teach my son to walk, as he constantly placed himself in just the right position to be used as a stabilizer for balance and a pillow for a fall, then a helper to hold onto as the boy pulled his way back to his feet and started all over again. All this never being formerly taught, just dogs understanding their roles and participating in something greater than themselves. All rooted in a clear leader/follower relationship that had been fostered through proper training and life style protocol in which to live by.
It is the dog who has lacked true human leadership in his life that becomes unstable, fearful, uncontrollable and reactive to unfamiliar and/or stressful situations. He has never truly learned to be part of something bigger than himself and to trust a human as being a fit leader. He has lost faith and trust, therefore his own confidence is diminished. His behavior becomes erratic and unpredictable by interpretation. This interpretation in fact is NOT true, he is totally predictable. You can always count on never knowing what he's going to do under stress. Thereby, quality of life becomes restrictive and begins to diminish for all parties in the relationship. The number one reason dogs fail out of homes is for behavior issues that were all preventable if owners had access to proper training.
When I speak to prospective clients on the phone, most conversations begin with "here are the PROBLEMS I'm having with my dog." I educate them as quickly as possible into understanding that those are not the problems, they're the symptoms. They are describing the end result that is no longer tolerable. If you try to spot train, you could very well end up dealing with an endless amount of behaviors from your dog that don't ever really get corrected and don’t align with your lifestyle.
The dog has a brain in his head and is quite capable of being so much more than a mindless conditioned robot through patterning type training. That brain needs to be stimulated and exercised, not bribed and coerced. True dog training does just this. Don't lower the standards, raise the dog. Give your dog what it deserves, a fair chance at being successful by meeting his needs and he will meet yours. Spend your time addressing the symptoms and you could end up doing that forever. Correct the true problems and most symptoms will begin to disappear all by themselves, as they weren’t the problem at all.
By building that house on a solid foundation, not sand, it will stand the test of time under all conditions. Short cuts and anecdotal fixes will come back to bite you when you least expect it.
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