Considerations for Keeping Dogs in the House with Small Children

Introduction

The impetus for this article is yet another situation where dog owners apparently adopted two dogs and decided after they growled once at their baby for crawling near the dog food that they were not only going to surrender their dogs to a shelter but request that they be euthanized. You can read the full article about this here.

Although I don’t think this is rocket science at all and many people already share my opinions, I’m going to hopefully put this out there again for whoever hasn’t gotten the message yet: 1) don’t casually get a dog that you don’t want to care for or train period 2) don’t allow dogs near babies at all without heavy supervision and continue to supervise as the child grows up so that they know what is and is not ok in terms of interacting with dogs and 3) if you get a dog that you don’t end up wanting give someone else the opportunity to adopt it.

Don’t casually get a dog.

Getting a dog that fits with your lifestyle and needs requires some work and ideally some discussions with people who know more than you about dogs. This is going to involve choosing an ideal breed and an ideal individual since dogs still vary a lot by breed. Once you have that dog, you’ll need to make sure that it is adequately socialized and trained. There are a lot of solid dog trainers out there. Shield K9 has seemed very solid to me based on reviewing a LOT of dog training content and my personal experiences with dog training. You can check out their online courses here. Shield K9 is not affiliated with this website. There’s also any number of equally adequate free content on youtube. Joel Beckman is solid and you can check out his youtube channel here. Again, not affiliated with this website but a lot of free information and other paid services.

This is a big investment and you should expect to spend a couple thousand dollars on dog training (minimum) during the first couple of years of your dog’s life. If you want to DIY it that’s also very doable but slightly more leg work if you haven’t trained a dog before.

Don’t allow dogs near babies. 

Sometimes I’m not sure what world we live in where we’re so comfortable with large canines that we’re ok leaving babies around them with minimal or no supervision. I love dogs but am extremely uncomfortable when I see photos of massive pitbulls next to babies. We get it – you want to show that your dog is so gentle and so under control and that pitbulls are so sweet and not at all vicious. It only takes one mistake for there to be a fatality or major injury from this type of carelessness. All dogs that are around children need to be heavily supervised. Never leave your children alone with your dogs until they’re around the age that a dog would recognize them as an authority (it seems like around 12 years old is when that starts to look more natural for me where I am not as worried about). Avoid playing with toys and food near small children. Dogs are impulsive and could snap if you place them in a situation of high stimulus where there are children. You can also work through these types of situations when they are puppies, for example, hand feeding your dog, making them wait to eat, observe how they are with other dogs near food, or small children near food and assess whether there is a significant risk there.
Don’t euthanize as a first resort.

Euthanasia should be for two things and two things only: 1) the dog’s quality of life has dropped so dramatically as a result of health conditions that they are having more bad days than good and 2) they have become so unsafe/aggressive that they are highly likely (i.e. more than 90% chance) to severely injure or kill another dog/other pet or person and there is a consensus among several trained experts that remediating this type of behavior is not possible. Barring some sort of chemical imbalance, a lot of things generally need to go wrong for a dog to become so aggressive that euthanasia should even be an option which essentially is going to boil down to extreme abuse. Of the people I personally know and whose dogs I’ve interacted with, there’s only potentially one where that would be an option that should be considered – this is not an option that should be jumped to and if that is your first thought the first time you see your dog growl, please never get pets and stay away from anyone with a dog. We don’t want to be around you.

Conclusion

Please don’t get pets just to get pets. If you’re having a baby, don’t get a puppy at the same time. That’s a lot of stress to put on new parents. Wait until your child is old enough to enjoy and appreciate a dog and can be taught how to interact safely with dogs. I really don’t understand the obsession in the US with getting so many pets that they then turn in to shelters. Lastly, do not just request euthanasia because it’s no longer convenient for you. Someone else will likely give your dog a better life than you. Just be upfront about exactly what your experience was and someone will work with that. Do better people.