Dog psychology

What to do if the baby comes after the dog.

Once upon a time a young man decided to bring his fiancee an unusual gift. He arrived at her place with a box, asking her to open it carefully. A black and brown puppy jumped out. It was a sweet baby Doberman. His name, Hector, who grew up to be half-dog half-human.

He slept on the girl's bed. When she wasn't there he used to lie on it and cover himself with the blanket. When he felt hot during the summer he would jump in the bath tub waiting for someone to pour water on him an cool him. The couple got married and the gal got pregnant. Nine months later a miracle came to life. It was me! ;)

Hector got jealous. Suddenly he had to share attention with someone else. A tiny little creature. He started being aggressive. He was giving me threatening looks. He was claiming my mother when she was holding me. My parents were young and inexperienced and they didn't know what to do. They came up with the idea to take Hector outside in the garden. They made him a nice doghouse and he was permitted in the house only a few hours of the day. It took him a while to accept me. And who can judge him? 4 years passed before he would let me touch him without looking at me "hatefully". Hector still had my parents' love and care. But he was necessarily dethroned. They kept playing with him at the yard and take him for walks, but he didn't live in the house anymore.

30 years later my husband and I adopted a tiny, fragile little "angel" (we had no idea how far that description was from reality, but I will share this experience in another post). We were parents for the first time. Dog-parents. After Harris' 2nd birthday we discovered we were expecting our own child. Harris had already been trained so we seeked the trainer's help once more. He told us to follow these simple steps:

- While I was still at the hospital, we put a piece of cloth in the baby's cradle and my husband took it to Harris so that he got to know the smell of the new member.

-The day we got back home, Harris didn't see us coming, my father kept him hidden. When we entered the house we left the baby in his cradle where Harris could get close and I sat away from him. Then my husband brought Harris by his leash. He ran towards me full of joy. He hadn't seen me for 4 days. After welcoming me he rose his nose and sniffed the air. He had sensed the new smell. He approached the cradle hesitantly. My husband still had him on the leash (just to be sure, in case he showed aggressiveness and not to lead him). He smelled the baby, started wiggling his tail and tried to lick it. Mission accomplished!

We want the dog to think he is the one who discovered the new member. Thus he will love it and protect it forever. Of course it's very important that the baby never stays alone with the dog even if a crystal clear friendly relationship is established, we can never know what might intrigue our pet. As with an older sibling, the baby should be watched by an adult when with the dog.

Harris went through a jealousy crisis when my son started crawling. Suddenly, he started peeing inside the house. At first we took him to the vet, because it seemed as if he couldn't hold his urine. The results of the tests were perfect, so we concluded it was behavioral. His trainer came to our help once more. Our mistake was that we had equated the dog with our child, confusing him as to which was his place. He started claiming and competing with the toddler and finding out he was losing he was feeling stressed. The trainer explained that the dog is happy and calm when he has clear hierarchical position in the family. He doesn't mind being the 15th in line. As long as this is clear. Correcting that was easy:

We started isolating Harris when our son was eating or we were playing with him. He was somewhere he could see us, but couldn't came close (we used a safety door for babies, put in a strategic place in the house, but it can be done by leashing the dog). On the other hand one of us would play with Harris exclusively for as long as possible, everyday. Even for 10'. No breaks, just the master and the dog. Problems were solved the first three days.

Since then, we live in harmony, at least regarding the dog's jealousy towards the kid. When the second baby came, following the exact same method, Harris accepted the new baby. Moreover with mach more enthusiasm (we will never know if that happened because he had done it before or because of "chemistry").