I'm going to have to call a doggy behaviorist

[speckledfrog]

  Briscoe doesn't really like W.  Mostly because he was a fur puller for quite some time.  He pats now but it's too late.  Usually when W come near him Briscoe just groans and walks away.  Recently he has started growling and snarling, it's not good.  I need someone to come and help me figure out how to train him to run away when W comes near him because right now he just moves to the other side of the couch/bed and Wyatt tries to touch him again.  I don't have a "safe" zone for Briscoe because everything he can reach W can reach.  I'm sure it's fixable but I'm just sad that he's not getting along with W.

[usuallylurking]

Can you set up a whole room for Briscoe (baby gate it off) so that he can have a room to himself? I know it sucks to exclude him but when we had to do that with one of our dogs I justified it because he usually was just laying around sleeping most of the day anyways. You can let him back out during naps and bedtime and really love on him. I'm not sure how to "fix" their relationship, sorry. I know it sucks - we had to keep our biggest dog separate after an incident with DS1 until we were sure we had fixed the problem. Good luck!

[speckledfrog]

He's very much a people dog and likes to be where we are. I am thinking about getting a baby gate with a dog door so he can hang out in the bedroom by himself if he . It seems to be worse in there. I also don't want to inadvertently reinforce some bad behavior.

[speckledfrog]

Jun 22, 2013 20:21:11 GMT -5 Que? said:

How old is your dog, and your kid?

One solution would be to not allow your animals on the furniture, then they won't be competing for space.

Is briscoe food motivated? I swear my dog loves my kid so much because we let her give him treats.

W is 16 months, Briscoe is almost 7.

He is very food motivated and aside from this growling while being disturbed from lying around he does okay with W.  There is no resource guarding at all (Briscoe will let W take toys from him and even let W feed him the food out of his dog bowl.

[shananagins]

Is there a way to gate him away from the baby but still nearby? That's what we're doing now. Our dogs are just too big and they jump up and tear around whenever someone walks past our house and they knock the girls down too easily. So we have a gate so they can't get into the family room. They hang out right by the gate so they're still with us, but they can't run over the babies. It's good for the cats to be able to escape the babies too.

[speckledfrog]

Que?, it's reassuring to hear that. I'd love it if I could just train Wyatt to stay away from Briscoe. As it is, he thinks the growling is downright hilarious. Clearly, he doesn't speak dog. As for the furniture, before we had a dog we were absolutely not going to let him up on the furniture ever. Hey, at least we aren't giving either of them booze.

shananagins, I've been looking at baby gates with dog doors so Briscoe could hang out in the bedroom if he wanted some peace. I don't want to inadvertently reinforce bad habits so I'm not sure what's the best thing to do.

My friend and her 11 month old are coming next week and I'm a little nervous about it now. I think he's going to have to be separated from us. Poor guy.

[bluelily]

I've got 20 month old twins and a nervous-aggressive dog. My twins have never abused her, but she's not very fond of them. So anyway, we do a lot of dog training at my house. Here are some tips we've learned so far:

1) Yeah, training the kids is really job #1. We use the phrase, "Leave puppy her space" an awful lot around here.
2) You'll want to separate the dog from the kids when you can't closely supervise them. For our dog, being locked up in a room is a lot kinder than being behind a baby gate. Seeing us and not being able to get to us is really stressful for her.
3) Giving our dog food puzzles helps her not to obsess. So our dog behind a gate with a tricky food puzzle (like a ball that drops kibble when you roll it around, for example) is infinitely better than a bored dog.
4) You want to build positive associations. It's great that your baby can give the dog his kibble. Try cheese.

ETA: We started training when our kids were around 10 months old and had started crawling. Our dog was fine until they turned mobile. She's a herding breed, and in her neurotic little brain, she's protecting her sheep. In entirely socially unacceptable ways. Anyway, our trainer calls 10-24 months the drunken sailor stage. To a dog, your baby is toddling around like a drunken sailor, entirely unpredictable and alarming. With a LOT of dogs, conflicts with the kids start at this age - so don't feel like you're alone.