Dogs and Kids

Over the years, I’ve definitely changed my opinion on what the relationship between kids and dogs should look like.  The more I learn about dogs, and work with dogs, the more I’m like: oh shit. These critters can do some damage.

When I think back on all the times when I allowed dumb stuff to happen between our dogs and kids, I’m lucky our kids have faces in tact.

Things like getting our nervous Bernese, Rudy, to lay down and put our sitting baby beside him.  Letting our toddler sit on Rudy’s back.  Allowing a baby to touch Tilly and, in turn, Tilly’s hair getting pulled. Our kids hugging our Rottweiler, Petey, around the neck while he looked at me like “ugh.”

I was of the mindset that our dogs are safe and could be totally trusted with our kids.

Nothing catastrophic happened, thankfully, I just changed my perspective the more I became educated on it.

I’ve noticed majority of dogs don’t treat kids the same as they treat adults. It makes sense though because in a typical household, the adult is the one doing most of the discipling and structure whereas the kids are usually always playing or allowing a higher energy with the dog. Dogs can also physically push kids around so it builds their ego and it’s as if the dogs see kids as equals or lesser-than beings.

That perspective can be tricky because depending on the personality of your dog, and who they think they are in the family, if a kid tries to get the dog to do something the dog doesn’t want to do, you may have a major incident that lasted only seconds.

Now I trust our dogs around our kids to a degree…I expect our dogs to respect our kids which looks like: no jumping up, no play fighting, no mouthing, no barking at them, no biting, no stealing their food or things…and really, it’s the same list for our kids to our dogs.

If anything, our kids have a longer list of “no’s” than the dogs do. Our kids aren’t allowed to lay in dog beds with them, use the dog as a pillow, dress them up, carry them around for no reason, blow in their face, pet them while they’re eating, hug them, hit them, kick them.  Do our girls still try some of these stunts? Of course, so it requires constant, daily, parenting.

I am the total “fun police” when it comes to parenting our kids around our dogs and I get loads of pushback from our 8-year-old because of what she sees other kids doing to their dogs. But “fitting in” is not worth the risk to me.

I always think, if it’s a lawless place where our kids are allowed to treat our dogs how ever they want, and our dogs have to deal with everything that our kids throw at them; what is it teaching our kids?

I don’t want one of our girls going to a birthday party, giving a dog a great big hug, and it going sideways on us.

It’s hard because we want our dogs to be good with kids and tolerate them, so we think it’s okay to get the kids to do whatever they want with the dog, but then we run the risk of teaching our kids bad habits when it comes to dogs.

But here’s what I’ve noticed, because of our dogs always getting respected by kids, nobody has an attitude towards them.  Our dogs are all super friendly towards kids and I’ve taught Garth, our Akita mix, to leave when any kids are getting too much and I’ve taught our kids when the dog needs space.

Reminding the girls that if they want to spend time with the dogs, to call them to them and give affection….not walk up to Enzo resting on his bed and pick him up just because they want to.

Asking the girls to remember to stop running if one of our dogs is chasing them so the excitement stops and I can intervene.

When the girls want to give any of our dogs a treat, I encourage they ask the dog to do something simple like a sit.

If we consider our kids to be the most consistent experience our dogs have with kids in general, and our kids are being constantly disrespectful (in the dog’s opinion), we’re unintentionally teaching the dog that when this size of human is around, all these uncomfortable things happen. Depending on the dog’s personality they may think: I’m okay with my little humans, but those other ones I don’t know? Nope.

When it comes to raising kids and dogs together, it’s worth asking yourself: would you want your dog to be treating other kids that way and would you want your kid to be treating other dogs that way?