Old dog, new baby - hints and tips

[Barnes79]

I'm pregnant and have a 6 year old dog. I was wondering if anyone had tips to make bringing home the baby and the dog/baby introductions run smoothly? The dog is a naturally anxious dog and used to being an only "child", but gets 2 decent walks a day and play time.

First of all congratulations.
As far as your dog is concerned, if you are going to have rules about him not getting on the sofa, or not going upstairs, or not going in bedrooms, then you need to start this now well before your baby comes home.
When the baby is born, presuming you are having him/her in hospital, get a muslin and put it in baby's crib at the hospital so that the baby's scent gets on it, then get someone to take the muslin home and allow the dog to sniff it etc, so that when baby comes home, your dog is familiar with the scent.
Really hope it all works out for you all.

One tip we were given was to gradually reduce the amount of attention that the we gave our dog prior to bringing the baby home, that way he didn't associate the arrival of the baby with the change of routine/attention. We then built back up the attention and on the whole our dog coped really well despite being nearly 13 when our son was born He wouldn't look at DS for a few months and actively avoided him but over time they became great buddies :)