Moms with older dogs.

[Jalapeñomel]

Yes dogs, lol.

My dog is old, and although she wants to protect D, she certainly doesn't want to be touched by him. I would like to avoid any potential issues, so is it best just to keep him away from her until he is older and can understand/learn how to pet and treat her nicely/gently?

[Deleted]

My dog is great with the kids and I never leave him alone with them unsupervised. Even a kid that knows how to treat a dog gently can still get involved in a game and startle or bump into the dog without meaning to. You never know and IMO you can never 100% trust a dog. (Flame away.) I trust my dog probably 99% but the amount of harm he could inflict quickly and without meaning to isn't worth the risk.

[bowies]

Probably. I have an older dog but she thinks she's his second mom. Our younger dog is flighty so we put up some gates in the house - we call it our zone defense. They get to roam within a set space and DS gets floor time without me worrying.

[Jalapeñomel]

Aug 26, 2014 14:07:44 GMT -5 @carmensandiego said:

My dog is great with the kids and I never leave him alone with them unsupervised. Even a kid that knows how to treat a dog gently can still get involved in a game and startle or bump into the dog without meaning to. You never know and IMO you can never 100% trust a dog. (Flame away.) I trust my dog probably 99% but the amount of harm he could inflict quickly and without meaning to isn't worth the risk.

Yes this is how I feel too. We bought some baby gates, so I think we'll keep the dogs on one side and him on the other when he's tooling around.

[hermione]

I keep them separated. It's just not worth the risk to me. As Tuxedo gets older, he's much jumpier. He's out with us whenever C is in bed or not home. Otherwise he has 1/2 the house to himself including a bed and overstuffed chair, all of his toys, etc. Honestly, when I get C up, he stands at the fate and whines until he one of us lets him through to "his side."

[ilikedonuts]

Our playroom is completely gated so the dog can't get to the kids when they are playing in there.

[iheartbanjos]

We are the 4th home for our older dog and the 6 year old is not without his issues, so I don't want to put them in a bad situation. We let them interact with the kiddos, but it's highly supervised. They have their own room that we put them in of we can't watch them and the older one would rather hang out in her room most the time anyway.

[speckledfrog]

That's what we did. My dog is at the point now where he'll tolerate W being near him, but prior to that it was all "Don't touch the dog" for the kiddo, and "Get off/Leave" for the dog. We also talked a lot about how when the dog growls it means he doesn't like that and is going to bite you so stop going near him.

[Marmee]

My dog loves babies but once they are walking she just stays away. My dog has her own space that the kids can't really access so she often goes there when the kids are around.

[Deleted]

i would keep them separated. My older dog does this on his own - he hangs out in his crate, moves to the other side of the room from DS, etc. When DS was younger we made an active effort to separate them, but now DS knows pretty well to leave him alone. DS will give him hugs and kisses when we are right there with the dog but thats it. He's a great dog, very sweet, but he has pretty bad arthritis so we definitely make an effort to head off any issues.

When DS was in the "mobile but can't understand" stage we always separated them. Not always in a hugely obvious way - I would keep the golden next to me while DS played across the room, for example, but enough so that we could prevent any problems.

[Deleted]

@fivedogs - we had a similar issue, where my niece came tearing across the room and jumped on my sleeping golden's hind legs. He jumped and snapped and hit her face (didnt bite her though, hard to explain). My brother said "oh I saw her coming but thought it would be funny."

I was so ticked bc now my SIL makes comments about how my golden is "unpredictable." I mean yes to the extent all dogs are but I could have told you what would happen when a 3 year old jumps on a sleeping dog, much less one with arthritis. I told my brother point blank it was his fault.

[Jalapeñomel]

Thank you for your advice. I will continue to keep them separated. I want to do what's best for the dogs and for DS, as well as teaching DS how to behave and treat animals respectfully.

[osulori]

Jalapeñomel we keep ours separated when we cant be right there too. It's a pain but it's what we've gotta do

[andthentherewere10]

Aug 26, 2014 19:01:03 GMT -5 @fivedogs said:

Aug 26, 2014 16:41:59 GMT -5 @mrsbecky07 said:

@fivedogs - we had a similar issue, where my niece came tearing across the room and jumped on my sleeping golden's hind legs. He jumped and snapped and hit her face (didnt bite her though, hard to explain). My brother said "oh I saw her coming but thought it would be funny."

I was so ticked bc now my SIL makes comments about how my golden is "unpredictable." I mean yes to the extent all dogs are but I could have told you what would happen when a 3 year old jumps on a sleeping dog, much less one with arthritis. I told my brother point blank it was his fault.

LOL, your golden is totally predictable - I would have bopped your niece too.  Your golden has great self-control - I know exactly what you mean by "hit her face."  One of our dogs totally does this if you mess with her feet too much - it's like a bottlenose dolphin ramming you.

we call it a nasal jab but my old girl gives them out of love.