Dogs and babies - help needed

[Deaconwood]

Hello everyone,

We have a seven-month-old baby and two two-year-old whippets. After the birth of our son we introduced the dogs to him gradually and they have always been very gentle and cautious with him. Over the months I have become more relaxed about their contact and allowed them to mix with him quite freely - with hindsight perhaps too freely.

Last Thursday I had the baby on the sofa with me with one of the dogs, who was asleep/resting. The baby was being as wriggly as babies are and somehow kicked or poked the sleeping dog. Dog snapped and bit him on the face. Incredibly luckily the injury was only minor but it could have been so, so much worse.

My first loyalties are with my son and I instinctively first thought that the dogs would have to leave as I could never trust them again. But cutting them out of our lives was an incredibly difficult to decision to make and we have been going round in circles and circles for days.

The dogs went to stay with their breeder for a night to give us some breathing space. We are now faced with a dilemma:

1. Allow the dogs to carry on living with us, but with a very different lifestyle. The dogs are now sleeping in an outbuilding with their large crate. After a long morning walk they are happy with this arrangement and come in the house in the evenings and when I can control the situation with the baby. This, combined with possible castration (breeder's advice) to calm them down a bit. Contact with baby would be strictly limited. Dog training sessions to help with behaviour (not that their behaviour was ever awful).

1. The breeder is happy to give them a home for as long as it takes to find them a suitable home with new owners.

I am totally torn about what to do. Deep down I know that I feel uneasy about having the dogs back in the house and I keep replaying the horrible event in my mind. I also worry about how I can ever trust them again, even if contact with my son was limited - particularly if we have more children. We live in a small house which makes things more difficult.

However, the thought of saying goodbye to them forever is awful. Was it terrible one-off mistake, or a warning I have to pay attention to for the safety of my child?

Any relevant advice anyone has would be incredibly useful.

Many thanks

This thread has been quite interesting to me, as I have a 20-month old dog and 7 month old dd. The dog we adopted from Africa as a 6-week-old puppy, and he's a sort of Saluki-hunting dog, big size, very energetic, cheeky but loving type. As a puppy we babied him a lot - sleeping on our bed etc (we weren't planning a real baby at that point!

Anyway, fast forward to now, and although our house is medium size, the ground floor is entirely open plan, so no doors to separate baby and dog. The dog jumps out of the garden too, so although I often put him out there, it's not always ideal...

We've bought both a dog cage www.petplanet.co.uk/product.asp?dept_id=775&pf_id=8471, and a playpen. The dog cage is perfect, is in the corner of the lounge gives the dog a retreat from the baby - it's his territory, although he didn't blink when my friends' toddler insisted on going in there.

I think as long as the dog has his space to get away from the baby, and you're careful to give him plenty of attention and exercise, and keep to some strict house rules, it's entirely workable.

It's a work in progress for us - I'm also attending dog training/agility classes, but I enjoyed living with dogs all my life, and would love dd to have the same. Labradors aren't the only breed compatible with children!

Sorry to hear about your situation, and I hope your baby is ok. I have a 5 year old cross breed dog, and two daughters (3.5 and 1).

I was so worried before I had my first child that the dog would be a problem - but he has been brilliant and they do not know life without him.

You have been given lots of good advice and I think you are being very sensible about it - trying to do what's best for your family. Castration is a good idea, as is some further training.

Before our daughter was born, we spent a lot of time training the dog. He is not allowed on beds or furniture. One thing I noticed was that you were all on the sofa together - this would give the dog the impression that you are all equals, but harsh as it sounds, they need to know they are bottom of the pack (especially important with a new baby). There are lots of things you can do to reinforce this in a subtle way - such as feeding the dogs last, not allowing them to steal food, you going through doorways first etc. An expert in dog training will be able to help advise you.

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do.

My personal opinion here so dont get offended:

Baby comes first. End of.

The dog has already bitten your child, if the alarm bells arent ringing then what will it take to show that your dog/s are capable of harming your child?

I know they're your dogs and you love them so you I wont be unsympathetic to that, but in all honesty can you go to bed at night and be 100% sure that your dog would never do anything like that again just because it hasnt before? No dog can promise you that.

Better to be safe than sorry

All those horror stories you hear in the news about dogs "that wouldnt hurt a fly" doing things to infants just scares the life out of me.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond. It is much appreciated and very useful to hear your stories.

It is a week since it happened now and although it still feels a bit like we're all in limbo, the shock has passed now (less tears all round!). The dogs aren't sleeping out in the shed anymore but are back to our old arrangement of crate and baby gates (which was horribly disrupted by having builders in for 6 weeks), although I think in the long-term an outdoor kennel/run would be better for some times of the day. I often think they'd rather be doing their own thing rather than be stuck in their crate feeling excluded from what me and the baby are doing.

I think what happened was the result of me not coping particularly well with 2 lively dogs and a little baby. I always felt guilty that I didn't give the dogs as much attention and imput as I used to. We had qll the right boundaries in place like crates and gates, but the times when I let them cross them and be around me and the baby were usually because I felt bad about excluding them. What happpened has given me a very sharp reminder that they are dogs, and not children.

We are booked on a dog training course (with a good dog behaviourist) starting in a few weeks, they are now banned from the sofa for good and are having the op next week. The future is still uncertain and I still feel deeply guilty and uneasy, but this seems the best way forward at the moment. Hopefully time will make things easier to rebuild the relationship. Or if it doesn't, I think we will be more reconcilled to re-homing.

But what you say Rubylove is completely and utterly right - and that's what scares the hell out of me.