Hi Everyone, My wife and I are currently expecting a baby and have a few things we are concerned about. Our dog is now about 1.5 years old. He still pulls on the lead so we have him on a gentle leader. We're trying to focus on loose leash walking as well as reinforcing calm behaviour. He's been around children before as we have alot of cousins that live nearby us. He is fine with kids, but sometimes gets a bit too close for others comfort. Do you have any recommendations on how to address these isssues? For example, he'll smell their face or nose goes right into their butts/crotches. Although it can be funny, it's also embarassing and we'd like to correct it when we have the time. Does anyone have recommendations for certain things to train on or have down with your dog before bringing the baby home? How should we introduce the baby to our dog? Last thing... how do you keep up with the shedding and cleaning of fur? With spring just around the corner, our dog's fur is everywhere, including my work desk!! We vaccuum regularly and comb him regularly, but it just doesn't seem to do much. What are you remedies for this? THANK YOU ALL IN ADVANCE!!!
Re: Training dog for a new born. Congratulations on the upcoming birth of your baby I'm afraid I can't help here as my daughter is 18. Just wanted to say good luck
Re: Training dog for a new born. Congrats on your impending baby! You are focusing on all the right things. This article here has quite a few tips for how to prepare for the arrival of a baby (and a couple of links to other articles http://www.thelabradorsite.com/introducing-your-labrador-to-the-new-baby/ We don't have any human kids, but plenty here do and will be able to let you know how they have handled this kind of introduction successfully
Re: Training dog for a new born. Congratulations from me too. Can't help on the baby proofing But over brushing your dog may encourage shedding. Not sure whether I am just used to it now but I thought there was more dog hair to contend with in the first year. Good luck!
Re: Training dog for a new born. Congratulations! It's a very long time since I introduced a newborn to a dog... just trying to think back to what we did. Think about the areas of your house that your dog has access to now, and the areas that you would like him to have access to once the baby is here. If this is going to involve any changes at all for your dog, you can start implementing those now. If he's never been allowed upstairs or slept on your bed, this does make life easier! Big bits of kit like brightly coloured pushchairs can come in early so he has seen them be folded away and has had a chance to familiarise himself with them - you'll need to be practising that yourselves anyway!! Apart from making sure our dog had lots of extra fuss and attention, I don't remember anything else we did in particular. He had his own safe space, was never left alone in the room with the baby - the obvious things. It might be an idea to work on a 'Go to bed' command if you don't already have something similar, and to reinforce not jumping up if that is an issue at all. We did also ask the inevitable stream of visitors to go and greet the dog first and not leave him out. I do seem to remember an episode of Victoria Stilwell's 'It's Me or the Dog' where she used a baby doll to get the dog used to his humans cuddling and speaking to something that wasn't him before the real baby came - but that was with a dog that had resource guarding issues and they were the resource... Getting a stand-by dog walker introduced to your dog is also a good idea, so you have someone primed to look after him when labour starts and who can also take him out for you on days when it's dark again before you are somehow ready to make it out. ;D Clare
Re: Training dog for a new born. ... and children with pets have better developed immune systems than those who don't. No, it's no practical help with the dog hair, but it is true. ;D Clare
Re: Training dog for a new born. I'd agree with everything Clare said, we also got some of Lizzie's clothes to get Riley used to her smell and practised walking next to the buggy.....he pretty much took it all in his stride though Early days.... And today..... Good luck and congratulations
Re: Training dog for a new born. No help here just a memory of when son was born, we visited husbands mum and dad and they had 5 Yorkshire terriers one being Susie who was more of my husband's dog when he was there, anyway son loved sleeping hanging over you knees so when he did this Susie would climb up onto husband and slowly try to nudge son off his lap ;D it was so obvious what she was doing it was hard not to giggle
Re: Training dog for a new born. Can't offer any help as we got dogs when our children much older. Congratulations on being pregnant, a wonderful time You've had some great advice. Barbara, oooh oooh gorgeous baby picture of Lizzie, stop they are worse than puppy pictures ;D Bless Riley too
Re: Training dog for a new born. Thank you all for the advice and kind words! The advice will help a lot! We are so very excited! The pictures are wonderful and something we can really look forward to too!
Re: Training dog for a new born. Barbara - wonderful, wonderful photos. Congratulations athao04 on your upcoming new addition!!! How exciting!! One word of advice I would add is that while safety obviously has to be your number 1 priority, at the same time try to carefully allow your dog to sniff your baby, and to see what exactly it is you have in your arms. Not allowing the dog near the baby and telling him off can obviously have an adverse affect; you want them to be friends eventually, like Lizzie and Riley. I would practice a new command of 'gentle' or 'careful' or similar in preparation. Ooh, good luck, keep us updated!
Re: Training dog for a new born. BABY!!!!!!!!!!! My first born is turning 8 next week! Starting too feel abit :-\.
Re: Training dog for a new born. Thank you everyone for your lovely comments OH told Riley when Lizzie was on the way that his most important job was to make Lizzie live dogs...aaahhhh! The first time she gave Riley a kiss my heart just melted but just as cute is when he's in the way and she says Riley beep beep! Or when she grabs my whistle, blows it, puts her hand up and says sit! It's fantastic and I'm sure you'll have lots of wonderful memories too
