Of dogs and babies

Sadie, our dachshund, has been with us going on nine years. She's a good girl, but one who is set in her ways. Her ways, unfortunately, don't include children. She's not comfortable around young children who chase her around. She has yet to nip at one, but we're always around when kids are near her and we try to have a few handfuls of treats to make the experience less traumatizing. In other words, Sadie does not have a baby affinity.

But our baby has a dachshund affinity. This wasn't a problem while Kathleen was stationary. Now that she's crawling . . . Sadie isn't necessarily the smartest dog in the world. She's quite intellegent in many areas, but when it comes to keeping herself out of Kathleen's reach, she needs to stay after school. She is forever at our feet. So is Kathleen. Can you see the probem?

We're in the process of teaching Kathleen to stay away from Sadie. Sadie needs her space. She doesn't need to worry about a baby stalking her whenever Kathleen is in the house.

We also want Kathleen to learn to let Sades and other dogs to come to her, not the other way around. I'm not worried about Sadie's nipping so much: I'm more worried about the reaction of other dogs. Not all pups have Sadie's patience. If they feel cornered, they will nip or worse. I can see it potentially being a worse problem now when she's so small compared to many dogs. Dogs like to establish a pecking order. Given her size, they may feel that they are higher up in the pack than she is, and they may take that as the go-ahead to put her in her place. It's already happened once with my brother's usually mild-mannered dog. We can't have that again. While we can't train other dogs, we can teach Kathleen. One day, she'll be big enough and confident enough to show even the bigger dogs that she's part of the alpha group, not another puppy to be nipped into submission.

On that note, we've found a good blog on this very subject, Dogs and Babies…Learning to Live Happily Ever After. It's written by an actual dog trainer who is also a mother to a little boy. It has some great advice which we'll be doing our best to follow.