Dogs, newborns advice and opinions?

[Gonnabmummy]

I love my dogs to bits. We had two, a husky (who is lovely and chilled) shes 1 .A neutered male staffy who's around 20 months And we've just got a new staffy puppy a bitch she's only 8 week old.
I just want some honest opinions about dogs and newborns. Mine a so laid back the pup is snoozing on the sofa. The male on a bed on the floor and the husky is asleep in the crate it's bliss.they do have there daft half hour but with themselves then they are asleep again.

I'm due our first baby on 28th August close I know, but I feel I can manage with the pup.

I just want to ask how did your dogs take the arrival of you LO did they even bat an eyelid?
Know one knows we have this pup as I can't be bothered with the comments. I'm about to turn 22 and adults in my life all speak down like we are kids. 2 colleagues had a good 20 minute talk down to me on my break a while before I left work.
They actually said and I quote "you cannot let your dogs upstairs anymore they will eat your baby"
Eat, eat really! I calmly replied I have no intention of dipping my child in chocolate and laying him on the floor for them, also what happens when baby is downstairs? Or do dogs only eat children when they are upstairs?!?

When I got up to leave staff room the woman held my arm and said "don't worry I had dogs when I had my kids"
So your dogs are fine but mine are like the spawn of satan?

Sorry for the rant but it makes me feel belittled and I don't know what to say. I'm normally a confident person but this type of criticism direct to my face always catches me off guard. I've told DP when baby is here I'm putting a sign on the door saying, my dogs jump up when you come in. If you don't like this please f**k off and wait to we are ready to visit and I will bring baby around.

So after all that. How did your dogs react? And what can I say to negative people?

All the staffies we have met out on walks have been well behaved...You were right when you were 4 - any dog can be badly behaved if they have got a bad owner.

bequick I suppose your right, I've had it with the alcohol to and things like Brie etc.
the old we did your ok mantra. Which is ridiculous I feel like saying well it never used to be law to wear your seatbelt but I'm sure you would tell me to wear it!

Exactly! I was quite upset about my boss telling us to get rid of the dog, but then my DP reminded me that my boss has never actually met our dog and has got 2 dogs of his own...and 5 kids!

Good luck to you :)
I am sure everything will be fine , you sound like a very responsible owner .
We have always had staffys and grandkids love them .
My dd has 3 children 2 guinea pigs and 2 cats and after we had to have our darling staffy boy put to sleep she missed him so much as she was our dog sitter she has recently got a staffy pup .... he is adorable and she is taking him to puppy training to make sure he had the best upbringing .
Busy house yes but full of love x

I had two dogs of nine months when our first was born. It wasn't a problem. We just had lots and lots of really long walks with the baby in a sling. You will be tired from all the work but the time will pass quickly and happily.

Ps when I took my darling staffy to vets the vet said when anyone asked her what dog she would recommend with a young family she said staffys were the best family dog !!!!
Anyone who thinks differently is more than welcome to visit my dog or my daughters dog .

I've got 2 German Shepherds, when I was pregnant the amount of people that asked "what are you going to do with the dogs?" was unreal! and it really annoyed me, like I was going to get rid just because I was having a baby. Anyway when my baby was born nothing changed, infact if anything the dogs got a better routine and more walks. I'm now pregnant again and I can only imagine what people are thinking .... 2 large dogs, 16 month old and another on its way lol

The newborn stage is easy with dogs, it's harder trying to keep a toddler from using them as slides but dogs are great for cleaning the mess around the high chair one thing that I found tho was my dogs were obsessed with eating dirty nappies ! not sure if that applies to all dogs tho or just my disgusting mutts ha

Yoni I agree with the high chair thing! When weaning my DS we'd put the dogs in the kitchen so they didn't try and nick food (they weren't in the habit of doing this but we thought it would be distracting for DS if they picked everything DS threw on the floor up and munched it) so every time he finished eating we'd call "clean up crew!" and they'd run in and enjoy all the carrots, breadsticks etc that DS had chucked onto the floor. :)

Meerkat, my dogs are the fussiest eaters unless its fallen off a high chair! it got to the stage I was pouring baby rusks over dog meat in attempt to get them to eat more.

Ha! Well of course they are fussy, if it's not baby or baby-flavoured most dogs just aren't interested!

I had 4 dogs when DD was born, two sadly passed away when she was about 12mo and I got a puppy when she was 14mo.

Baby and dogs was actually easier for me that toddler and dogs. We had baby gates, a playpen and crates for the dogs so it was easier to keep the dogs and the baby separate unless supervised. Now that she is a toddler it's more difficult because she goes everywhere and it's literally not possible to supervise absolutely everything, e.g. a couple of times she has fallen over onto the dogs.

Luckily my dogs are very tolerant of DD. Things that helped were:

• being very aware of signs of stress in the dogs and always making sure they had the option to walk away and find a quiet place.
• the dogs knowing how to walk on the lead nicely. Trying to hold onto more than one unruly dogs and push a pram is very stressful.
• we have off-lead walks on our doorstep which is a god sent, I think I would have struggled without this opportunity to allow the dogs to blow off steam (especially the puppy) as and when they needed it.

Try to teach the pup bite inhibition, really good manners on lead and no jumping up as soon as possible as these will all help.

Thanks booboo the two we have are good on the lead and we live a five minute walk from the prom so can let them off easily too :) and like I said DP will be around morning, afternoon and night so they can definitely get three walks :)