Integrating Dogs with a Baby
So you just had a baby….
You come home from the hospital (exhausted) and bring in your car seat and hospital bag. Your dogs are excited and worked up and won’t stop smelling you..and all of a sudden..the baby cries for the first time.
Your dogs lunge and bark and jump at the baby and you turn to your spouse and say, panicked, the dog is going to kill the baby.
Instead of continuing this story, let me walk you through how I worked my dogs and my newborn baby.
Step 1: Spend lots of time with your dogs when your pregnant
Your dogs need to be part of every single step of getting ready for baby. Your dog will sense you are changing and may develop some anxiety when you are pregnant. Work with your dog on new skills or spend lots of quality 1:1 time with your dog.
Step 2: Set up your baby stuff and nursery early
Bring your dogs into the nursery and let them explore. They may want to play with the babies toys and may try to get in or on furniture. We let our dogs do whatever they wanted because we wanted the experience to be positive. This is where you need to use your best judgement to help teach your dog boundaries. Some exploration is okay, but they should be starting to learn boundaries with
Step 3: Have someone bring home a blanket or something with your new babies scent on it.
We did not do this because of Covid-19. But ideally you want to expose your dog to new smells before coming home to your baby.
Step 4: Come home and keep your eyes on your baby at all times
Our dogs were really excited when we got home - they must have thought we were on vacation. We were out of the house for 4 full days because I had a C-section. Our awesome friends and volunteers watched the pups and gave them tons of love, exercise, and attention. When we got home, Cam went in and played with the dogs and took them on a walk outside. I sat in the car with the baby. Then, Cam fed and gave the dogs a special treat and put them in their bedroom. The dogs were a little worked up which is normal because they missed us and didn’t want to be away from us.
When the dogs were secure in their bedroom, with the door closed, the baby and I came inside. I had to hobble up the stairs and I got into bed to rest.
The hardest part of having a baby was this first night when I couldn’t see my dogs.
It was so hard to listen to them cry and want to be with us. Cam put some of the babies hospital blankets in our dog’s beds. Cam visited the dogs through the evening and even sat and watched TV with them downstairs. We did everything we could to try to make the first night home as normal as possible. It was so hard on all of us to have to change our night time routine. I was very emotional and upset that I couldn’t see my dogs after being away for 4 days.
It is so important to remember and remind your partner that you can not rush into training of any kind. You need to work extremely slowly on exposure exercises.
Think of it like your first experience at the gym. It sucks. You don’t just jump on a treadmill and run 5 miles. You first research gyms, go for a tour, sign up, and go for your first work out which is REALLY hard! You go back and keep working out and each session you get stronger and learn more. This is the same experience you and your dogs should have with training. It will take TIME and PATIENCE! And please keep in mind that your mood and overall head space will affect your ability to perform. If your stressed out, tired, and not feeling well .. you will not perform the same. Your dog will read your energy and react based on your energy. Be mindful of your role in the training process!
Step 5: Visit with your dog while the baby is with your partner or a family member
This is an overlooked step. You need to spend special quality time with your dogs during the exposure and integration process. Be mindful of how your body is healing - you need to be careful of your dogs jumping on you and of straining your body.
When I had my first postpartum visit with my dogs I was still in a lot of pain from my C-section. I wanted to hug and kiss my dogs and I was literally in tears because I couldn’t. We tried to think of a way to protect my belly but let me get as close to my dogs as possible. Since all of my dogs are a little rowdy and jump, we had to be super careful.
We figured out that if I sat at my desk with a pillow on my belly, I could protect my belly and still reach down and pet my dogs.
It was so amazing to finally be able to sort of hug my dog Zeus (who is the love of my life!). I noticed that Zeus was smelling me. He was extremely heightened by the new smells on me. Breast milk and the baby’s smell. Zeus was literally shaking smelling me because of how worked up he was.
It is so important to give your dogs time to acclimate. By breaking down the experience for my dogs I gave them ample time to absorb all of the aspects of the new baby.
Step 6 SLOW exposure exercises:
Maybe you have noticed by now that this process is SLOW! We didn’t just walk in with the baby and hold him up like Simba. We didn’t let our dogs see the baby in any way. The first two days home were all exposure by scents. The next step for us after our dogs desensitized to smells was to focus on some light exposure exercises.
For our first exposure exercise we let our dog Zeus run free in our bedroom. Cam was in the bathroom with the baby. Zeus got to explore the babies changing table. You may be asking, if you let the dog jump up wont the dog jump up when the baby is up there?
My answer is - with proper exposure exercises and shaping, Zeus will not jump up. This may not be true for all dogs. But this the process that best fit my dog’s needs.
We let Zeus explore with complete freedom to help his arousal. He gets so amped up and worked up from smells and sounds.
After Zeus was done smelling and exploring the changing table he realized the baby had made some sounds. Again, this was another sensation for him to take in.
Not everyone will agree with this approach. We used this for Zeus because he needs to calm down in order to calm down and be in the mental space to learn.
Step 7: Exposure exercises with visual
By day 4 or 5 our dogs all started to calm down. They began to accept the smells and the changes in our home. At this point, with their moods leveling out we thought the dogs were ready to start some exercises where they could see the baby.
Our friends came over and visited the baby through the door due to covid-19. After their glass door visit we had them take the dogs out to run in the back yard. We always try to keep the dogs active.. during an transition or integration it is even more important for your dogs to get exercise.
After the dogs were thoroughly exercised, we let the dogs see the baby for the first time through the door. They barked and jumped. We gave them about 20 minutes of watching us with the baby before we quit. We always quit early and keep things positive.
Step 8: Exposure exercises with increased proximity
This stage can be a little scary and you need to remember that your dogs still need things slow. Crawl, crawl, crawl before you can walk. We decided it would be best for our dogs to do a walk outside with the baby. Cam held the baby for the entire walk and didn’t let the baby in reach of the dog.
This was a great way to give the dogs closer access to the baby with a fun activity that would distract them. Our goal in exposure exercises is to gradually increase proximity and to try to avoid stressful, focused situations.
We repeated this walk 3x over the course of 3 days. At this point we were almost at one week!
Step 9: Indoor exposure exercises
Indoor exposure exercises need to occur after your dogs are exercised and mentally tired. We put our baby in his dome on top of our table and stood guard of him. We let the dogs smell and even approach the dome. We were very careful not to let Zeus paw at the baby or jump on the table. The dome offered protection.
You will see in this video Zeus is AMPED up. He is not a human- aggressive dog but he is extremely reactive and overly excited.
This may make you very nervous but think about how long Zeus has worked up to seeing the baby. Imagine if on day one we tried this? The reaction would have been 10x worse!
We repeated this exercise for 2 days before moving onto even closer proximity. Through each stage our #1 focus is our safety for our baby and the dogs.
We gave the dogs peanut butter on spoons during an exercise where Cam picked up the baby. This is our way to positively reinforce the experience of being around the baby. This also doubles as a great distraction!
We repeated the exercises standing until the dogs seemed more relaxed. Then we moved to sitting.
Step 10 - Continue exposure exercises and increase variety
After working for about 2 weeks on slow integration, we mastered the baby dome and walks with the baby. We even had our dogs sleeping in our bed while the baby was in the basinett. With our dogs all seeming comfortable, trusting and aware of the baby we decided we were able to add a bit more variety into the mix. In other words, we started to trust our dogs and knew we could put the baby in different carriers around the dogs.
We were always right there with the baby. We never left the baby alone with the dogs. To recap, we worked on these situations in this order:
Smells of baby
Sounds of baby
Visual of baby
Walk outdoors with baby
Baby in dome on table inside
Standing, holding baby inside
Sitting, holding baby inside at table
Resuming sleeping routine of dogs sleeping with us while baby is in bassinet
Sitting, holding baby inside on couch
Letting the dogs snuggle the baby while sitting on the couch
Baby in swing with dogs loose
Letting visitor hold baby with dogs loose
Putting baby in a chair on the ground with the dogs loose
Step 11: Always be on guard and keep working slowly as new milestones come up
Even 4 months later, we still are supervising our dogs around our baby. I fully trust my dogs but they are clumsy and get excited. If someone were to ring the doorbell they would jump and go bark. They may accidentally step on the baby. We are always right there and never leave the baby.
As we move towards the future, we are going to keep a close eye on our dogs as the baby starts to eat real food and starts to walk. We don’t want the dogs to be startled or feel jealous with the baby eating food.
