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Hawaii Babies
redshoegirl
member
babies and pets - am I making a huge mistake?
redshoegirl
member
The babies and I generally hang out in the living room during the day. The dogs' crates are also in the living room, and that's where they usually are when they're in the house. (The cats have full run of the place, obviously.) Usually I'm right there next to the kids, but of course sometimes I have to pee or whatever and then they're all in the same room, unattended.
Someone that Ben works with recently had to get rid of their dog because the animal - who was, up until that point, an extremely loving and gentle pet - suddenly attacked their small child. No provocation - the dog literally suddenly got up, charged across the room and bit the child quite badly several times before the parents could pull it off. (Side note: I know some pet owners might go up in arms about getting rid of a pet for any reason, but I'd get rid of my dog in a heartbeat if that happened - there are no second chances when it comes to my kids, and I don't care if that makes me a bad pet owner.)
This story has made me so nervous...am I making a huge mistake to leave the dogs unattended with the kids,
even if it's only for a couple of minutes? I can easily close their crates to keep the dogs contained when they're
inside - maybe I should start doing that? I would never dream in a million years that our dogs would hurt
our children, especially since they die of happiness if we so much as
let them sniff the boys' feet, but neither did these people. They
didn't have any training/behavioral/aggression issues with their dog -
it was very gentle and sweet up until that point (including with the child, so no one imagined there would ever be a problem). Obviously there must have been something triggered in the dog's mind, but no one can figure out what it was.
Do you leave your baby and dog unattended in the same room? Am I just an idiot/bad parent for doing it up until now (it's OK, you can say it)? Or am I overreacting to this story?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: babies and pets - am I making a huge mistake?
I think leaving the boys in the same room as the dogs while you step out for a minute is okay. Like you said, it's only to go to the bathroom or something, so you won't be gone very long. Also, you will be in earshot of the boys, so you can run in there if you hear them cry.
For a dog to attack a baby for no apparent reason is very rare. It's possible that the other dog did give some warning signs that were either ignored or not noticed. Even if he didn't, the odds that your dogs will do the same thing is very low.
One thing I learned early on is that you can't let all of the parenting horror stories affect you. You can't protect your children from everything and you'll go crazy trying. Just trust your gut and you'll be fine.
When I was young, our cat went up to my then-infant sister and clawed her face. She almost lost an eye! Now, more than 25 years later, my sister still has scars on her face. They are very light and one is on her eye lid, but they're still there.
So I would be just as worried about your cats as your dogs. Are they declawed? I know, declawing is horrible and I normally would not condone that, but babies come first.
As for your dogs, YES I would absolutely put them in their pens and not leave them alone with the baies. I know an attack is rare, but telling yourself that after it's happened will not make you feel better. Better safe than sorry. I think with time, you can gradually give them more freedom. But the boys are still way too young to be able to fend for themselves.
I never really talked about this much on the board, so I'm not sure how many people know that we used to have a wonderful dog. But he bit people. He bit more than 20 people, including DH's Stepmom's mom, and drew blood, sending her to the hospital. He didn't mean to hurt her, he was being overly protective. Based on his history of aggression, DH decided we could not keep him once the baby was born. :-(
So, just to give you the other side. Be careful, please.
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
This is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about b/c our dog is our first baby, and I would want to protect her and our upcoming baby. In my opinion, I would never leave our dog and baby unattended - ever. I would take the few minutes or whatever to secure both of them if I needed to go out of the room - a few minutes now could save a lifetime of heartache. Sadly, I've known a few families that either had to get rid of the dog or put the dog down b/c it attacked a child (one kid was 3, the other was 8; one caveat, one dog was a really grouchy dog). A while ago I think MarriedToMrWright posted this great article:
https://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/03/dog.new.baby/index.html?iref=newssearch
It sounds like quickly crating the dogs would work for you. I like the idea, from the article, of making a baby free zone for the dog to hang out while still with the family.
We don't have any pet but I would always err on the side of caution. Better safe than sorry.
You know I thought about Reuben one day and wondered why I haven't seen any pictures of him on your blog? Sorry you had to give him away :-( but yeah, babies' safety comes first!
that's odd for it to happen out of nowhere, usually things like that in an otherwise normal/happy/nonaggressive dog are caused by things like hypothyroidism, cognitive dysfunction/dementia, etc. but who knows...maybe the dog had been giving some warning signs that no one noticed?
in any case i think you just have to do what you feel most comfortable w/doing. i leave miss A alone w/the dog sometimes (not long of course) and i know she would never harm her. she is bashful around her and only wants to lick her...and when A is crying and i can't get her to stop, she starts howling like she wants to help. on the flip side, as pp mentioned "better safe than sorry" is never a bad motto to live by. you just have to decide what you're comfortable with.
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
My Food Blog - Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats
Like you, we leave Makua alone for a little with Ashton while I go to the restroom, etc. Makua gets a bad rap enough for being a pit bull and while I trust him not to harm Ashton, they are animals and can be unpredictable like in the case with Ben's co-worker. Our house is really small so we are always usually in the same room.
Makua loves Ashton and if Ashton is pinching him or just poking at him(which is quite often now that Ashton is very mobile), I can see the look in Makua's eyes that are like, get this kid off of me mom!! I always praise Makua for being a good sport, etc. and I think he understands. I've seen Makua get so annoyed that he will just start to lick Ashton in the face so that Ashton crawls away. It's pretty funny!
All in all, if you really know your dog then I think you should be okay. We sort of got Makua ready for Ashton (training wise). All of us still sleep together and we treat Makua the same as before Ashton was here (at least we try as much as possible....he doesn't get walked as often) and I think that has helped.
I'm sorry:-( That makes me sad for you, but you had to do what was best for your baby!!! I would have done the same thing.
We also do daily "meet & greets" with the baby and one dog at a time where I either am holding the baby or right next to him while MH has a leash on the dog. Yes, we're over-the-top paranoid. But LO is so small right now. Both our pups' jaws are twice as big as LO's head. They're fast and strong 60 lbs dogs and LO is 6 times lighter than them, and we have two of them.
Huskies have been reported to attack babies even though they're supposed to be one of th best dogs for kids (they love them) but I don't think the breed matters. Stats will show that pit bulls and rottweilers do most of the human attacks but even labs have been known to seriously attack ppl. So I feel like we can never be too careful no matter what breed the dog is.
Our dogs have been interacting with kids since they were born--we got them from breeders with little kids and we kept them exposed to kids while growing up. They never showed any signs of aggression and they LOVE kids. Every time we do the meet & greet with the baby, they are super gentle, only sniffing and licking. Once, our girl pup even placed her head gently on the baby's lap and looked up at him with puppy eyes cuz he was fussing and starting to cry. It was so cute and I wanted to take a pic so badly but I couldn't because I wanted to fully attend to the baby.
MH and I will gradually be less anal about this issue but I think LO will have to be much older before we will let him play with the dogs and even older before we leave them unattended. Also, we haven't had our dogs for that long--the oldest is only 1.5 years old so that's also why we're so anal.
I don't think you should be like us, but just sharing the reasoning behind why we do what we do. I think it's worth to take into consideration how long you've had them (and hence know them), maybe how old they are (I feel like older dogs are less likely to change drastically), how big they are, their history, etc. Honestly, I'd be more careful with some dogs than others and there's not really a formula that applies to all animals but seeing how paranoid we are about our own dogs, I don't ever let any other dogs I didn't know super well already even come near LO. I think it's all about how much you trust them--I guess we just don't trust our dogs that much!
On a side note, this reminds me--the first post I ever made on TN was on the pets board and it was right after we got our first dog and I ran into an article about a husky attacking a baby. I never had a dog or was exposed to them at all while growing up, so I posted on the pets board asking how ppl deal with pets and kids cuz I was curious--we weren't even TTCing--and I got flamed left and right about how irresponsible I was to leave my kids alone with pets and I was like "uhh, I don't have kids and I was talking about the article but didn't say that I was planning to leave future kids alone with my dog". That was also my last post on that board =P didn't want to post with ppl that assume things that were not mentioned, thinks only their way is the right way, and were flame-crazed.
Thanks so much for the feedback, ladies!
I really do trust our dogs. They're both very, very good with children. They LOVE it when our friends bring their LOs (aged 1.5-4 years old) around - they follow the kids around, let them climb on them, yank their fur, etc., and are ecstatic the whole time. I've even seen one child poke Indy in the eye, then tug a whisker and then shove their hands up inside his mouth so they could feel his teeth (this was a very young child - they weren't trying to hurt him, just explore with their clumsy little hands) and the whole time Indy just sat there, absolutely stone still, with a very patient expression on his face and happily licked the kid when it was over.
HOWEVER...I think I'll start closing their crates. I know that, as 4forluck said, you can't let all of the parenting horror stories affect you. But it's a simple thing for me to do - they're already in their crates, after all, so it only takes a few seconds - and I don't think it's too huge of an overreaction to this story (if I decided I wanted to suddenly get rid of our sweet, un-aggressive dogs because of it, then that would be a different thing altogether).
When they get a little older I'll feel more comfortable leaving them unattended together, but they're just so little now. I know the odds of anything happening are REALLY low, but I would hate to end up with a lifetime of regret for not taking 3 seconds to close a crate, kwim?
Oh, and Malia, about the cats - I'm not too concerned about them because they really don't want anything to do with the kids. They're not aggressive toward them or anything, but they'd just rather avoid them altogether. *shrug* Also, I'm so sorry about your dog, although I would have done the same thing. I know I'd get flamed to hell and back on the Pet Board for that, but I'd still have done it.
Thanks.. It was hard. I cried and cried.
Re the cats... Keep an eye on them... Our cat was like that too, when out of the blue, he took a swipe at my sister. Just something to be aware of.
Sounds like your dogs are great with kids! How awesome! I do think we might want to try again someday... How can kids not grow up with pets?!
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
Will do, I promise.
I'd have cried too - it would kill me to have to get rid of one of our pets, but our kids always come first.
They really are great with kids and I'm sure I could leave them unattended together for the rest of their lives without anything happening, so I almost feel kinda silly for thinking about all of this...but like I said, I'd rather be a bit overprotective now than end up regretting it the rest of my life, kwim?
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