Bringing in baby

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Pryor Daily Times

Dogs need training to be ready for new additions to family

By Julie Kirkwood


NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — At six months pregnant, Dawn Price made a fake baby and started carrying it around her house.

The bundle was wrapped in a borrowed receiving blanket that smelled faintly of vomit and baby powder. The fake baby itself was a towel wrapped around a tape recorder playing a homemade recording of Price’s sister’s baby crying.

This was not some sort of crazy maternity class stunt.

It’s just what a woman does these days to make the arrival of the new baby easier on the first true “baby” in her household: her dog.

“He was our first, our baby,” Price said of her 7-year-old springer spaniel named Archie.

Dogs can react in unpredictable ways when a new baby arrives, says 31-year-old dog trainer Becky Randall-Pelletier.

“People in our age demographic tend to treat our dogs more like our kids, more so than our parents did,” she said.

When Randall-Pelletier was growing up, the family dog was let out in the morning and disappeared until dinner time. Dogs today spend most of their time indoors with the family, and many are accustomed to a pampered life of doggie day-care, dog parks, dog massage, dog bakeries and dog birthday parties.

These “first born” household members sometimes don’t take kindly to the sounds and smells of a new baby, the lack of attention and exercise, and the new expectations, Randall-Pelletier said.

Dog behaviors that used to be little more than an annoyance, such as jumping up to greet you at the door or biting anybody who touches them while they’re eating, suddenly become a safety risk once there is a baby in the house.

About 4.7 million people are bit by dogs each year, and about 60 percent of them are children, Randall-Pelletier said. In children younger than age 4, 90 percent of dog bites occur in the family home. Pregnancy and the arrival of a new baby are among the top 10 reasons people surrender dogs to shelters.

Dawn Price, who lives in Newburyport, got the idea to prepare her dogs from her veterinarian. Her springer spaniel seemed to be good with kids, but her 5-year-old Aussie, Crystal, tends to bark and get upset by strangers and other dogs.

She introduced the fake baby slowly at first, on low volume and only when the dogs were doing something enjoyable, like eating.

“At first they were nervous,” she said. “It was a new sound for them, and they would go and hide.”

Gradually, the dogs got used to it. She played the tape louder and for longer periods of time and they didn’t mind, she said. “They would just go lie down.”

It paid off that August when they brought home their baby Teagan.

“It was almost like they expected her,” Dawn said. “It was almost like they knew she was coming. It was surprisingly easy.”

Both dogs were gentle with the baby. For the first year of Teagan’s life, they followed her around and sat by her during diaper changes. The springer spaniel licked her and put his head on her pillow. The Aussie slept in the baby’s room at night.

One morning, Dawn heard the baby babbling into the monitor around 4 a.m. She got up to see what was going on, just in time to hear Teagan on the monitor saying, “OK, bye-bye,” and see the dog walk out of the baby’s room.

They had passed the first obstacle, the arrival of the infant.

But there’s a second critical period in the relationship between a baby and a dog, Randall-Pelletier said, when the child learns to crawl.

“Dogs don’t understand, ‘oh these are little humans,’” Randall-Pelletier said. “They don’t make the same noises we do. They’re wobbly; their movements are erratic. If your dog isn’t exposed to toddlers all his life, all of a sudden he’s got this little alien planted in his living room.”

Julie Potter, director of Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, Mass., said children with the best intentions can set off otherwise friendly dogs.

“Little children love to hug,” Potter said. “They hug their stuffed animals and they hug the dog. Hugging the dog is a very dominant gesture and very threatening.”

About two months ago, Dawn learned that even with the best training, some dogs just aren’t safe around babies.

Teagan was on the floor crawling near Archie, her springer spaniel, when the dog growled deep in his throat and bared his teeth.

“That’s the moment when your heart, it just literally drops,” she said. “I knew that there was a decision that now we have to make.”

This was Dawn’s first “baby,” the dog who sleeps on her bed at night. Archie and Crystal were the inspiration for her dog health-food store, the Natural Dog in Newburyport. Now her best hope is to find a new home for Archie, one without children or other dogs.

“We thought we were getting the breed that was a good family dog, thinking he would be with us forever, with the kid,” Price said. “Now it’s a safety issue. You can’t take chances.”

Randall-Pelletier once worked with a family that had huskies who were perfectly behaved with an infant. Then one day, the baby crawled up to the crate where one of the dogs was lying and he lunged at her.

“No one is immune to it,” Randall-Pelletier said. “It happens to the best people under the best circumstances.”

The good news is, she said, most dogs are surprisingly good with children once they’ve had a little training.

“For most people if I catch ‘em early on, by the time the baby’s here it’s a no brainer,” she said. “Dogs and kids can be a great combination if the parents put in the work.”



Julie Kirkwood writes for The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass.



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When the baby arrives

Include your dog when the baby’s around whenever possible. If the dog is clingy and needy, don’t give the dog attention unless the baby is there. That way the dog won’t feel he’s in competition with the baby. Instead he will be conditioned to associate good things — your affection — with the presence of the baby.

Expect some regression in behavior. A house broken dog may make a mess if he smells the spot where a dirty diaper sat on the floor. He may dig through the laundry basket and pull out your bra because he craves your attention, even if it’s yelling.

You may find that you don’t feel the same kind of love toward your dog once the baby is born. Don’t worry. This is normal. It does not mean that you are a bad person or that you must get rid of the pet or that the dog hates you.

Be honest about how your dog reacts to children. Some dogs, even with training, are not good with children. It’s better to recognize that early and find a new home for the dog, rather than to put the child in a dangerous situation.

Source: Dog trainer Becky Randall-Pelletier