Fur Baby Friday

HoosOnFirst · March 2015

We haven't had any pet posts recently. Anyone want to share anything about their current 4 legged babies?

My cat has taken to sleeping between my legs, which he never did for his first 5 years with us. It's cute but super annoying because then I have to move him to move to sleeping on my side or switch positions.

Here's a pic of him planted on my side of the bed.

nsilberman216 · March 2015

My little fur-man, Gus, hugging my belly a month or two ago. He still usually sleeps near my husband's head at night which is good bc I toss and turn...a lot! Love the black kitties

bbnmama2012 · March 2015

I was about to post a question about pets. I'm glad I saw this board. What general rules should a person have with pets and babies, especially large dogs? (Staying off furniture, nursery off limits, start sleeping in crate?) We've recently started training our dogs to stay off the furniture for safety reasons, but my husband seems to think it is cruel to our fur babies. They don't like it and give us the puppy dog eyes and he always gives in. Lol.

queequeg09256 · March 2015

My dog wasn't allowed on the couch, then he wasn't allowed on the good couch. Now he is allowed on the good couch with a blanket if invited. Wasn't allowed on the bed but now sleeps on the bed just not through the night. That being said my dog is also incredibly well trained, walks next to us without a leash with no issues. I think for training it depends on your lifestyle and what you think is best for your pets.

ksimo6 · March 2015

We have two 70-80 lb labs. They were never allowed in the furniture. We watched them very closely when we brought DD home. We would put her on the floor and let the puppies smell her and lay by her etc. with some direction, they learned how to treat her .... Ie do not sit ON baby, sit BY baby. Just keep an eye on them and help them understand. They will get it.

Our youngest dog and our Dd.

Mommaswizz · March 2015

This is my almost 4 month old fur baby Luna. We allow her on the couch but my husband is anti-fur babies in bed. That rule originally made me sad as i love snuggling with my doggies but it makes a lot of sense with a baby on the way

ETA- photo attachment fail lol

[Deleted User] · March 2015

The user and all related content has been deleted.

kaycorey89 · March 2015

Before I got my dog fixed last summer she was allowed anywheres. Bed, couch, basically where she wanted to go haha. Then once she went into heat I started putting a baby gate up between the living room and kitchen to keep her off the furniture. ( she was allowed on furniture in her previous home so was hard to try and break her of it) after she was fixed and healed up. I did let her back in. Then found out I was pregnant. So I started putting the gate back up and only letting her in once and a while. She was crate trained but now she has free roam of the kitchen. Day and night. And it's a pretty decent sized kitchen. She doesn't like it. She sits at the gate and looks in at us

I feel bad. Just she's shedding so much and I don't want her in the babys face all the time. Once he's old enough and she's used to him being around then the gate will probably come down.

ElRuby · March 2015

Glad to see other pet lovers.... I HATE when people discard their pets when a baby comes along... It's disgusting!

kales0719 · March 2015

I have a 7 year old beagle named White dog. He came along with the boyfriend, so I've only had him 3 years, BUT when he became our dog I brought him inside (he was his outdoor hunting dog) and now he's spoiled and cuddled way too much. When we found out I was pregnant I SWEAR that the dog knew then and he was mad at me for a good 3 weeks. These days he likes to cuddle up and put his head on my belly. He pouts when he doesn't get attention, so we're a bit concerned how he will react when his brother gets here. We try to keep him off the couch unless invited up, but in the bedroom he can sleep where ever he likes.

eeyorefan215 · March 2015

My Snoogle stealing cat!

Westypet · March 2015

Omg black kitties like mine!

KaLikeAWind · March 2015

ElRuby said:
Glad to see other pet lovers.... I HATE when people discard their pets when a baby comes along... It's disgusting!

When I was working for a vet I lost track of how many clients I had who decided that they needed to get rid of their pets because of a baby. SO infuriating. Sometimes due to just plain ignorance ("my dr told me that I have to get rid of my cat because I am pregnant") and sometimes just laziness ("I don't want to have to walk / deal with the dog after baby comes"). I'm also glad all you ladies are taking the commitment you made to your pets seriously.

In this photo I have Samurai Jack, The Ewok Praetorian Guard (the black and white) and Fun (the all black). This photo is pre-pregnancy. Samurai always had a crush on Fun and wanted to be near her, you can see he's touching her butt. She passed in September, and I miss her terribly. (There has also been some discussion between DH and I about the timing of Ewok's conception - no more than 2 weeks after Fun passed...hmmm) We also have another all black cat named Silt ("The Big Man") who just doesn't hang out with us that much, so I don't have many great photos of him. LOVE the black cats

ETA spelling

rrcameron21 · March 2015

I have a boxer pitbull! Sometimes he just comes over to me and rests his head on my bump for like 5 minutes and walks away. It's so sweet!! He is the best and I would never get rid of him because of baby.

MrsWiggleWaggle · March 2015

Pregnancy perk #187 DH gets to do the litter

CurlyMom78 · March 2015

Our fur baby, Kona a standard poodle approx 50 lbs. is allowed on the furniture. She's allowed on the bed only while we are watching tv before we go to sleep, she gets up on her own to go to her bed half the time. But somehow she is in between DH and I when we wake up though! She knows the words off, sit, down, get in your crate, out, etc. Once baby arrives I plan on crating her when I take a shower though. She does know the words "get out of bathroom, kitchen, bedroom" or whatever room we want her to leave and she leaves and sits at the threshold of the room that she left. I'm not too worried about her and the baby, we'll just have to train her like we did with other things.

dancingram · March 2015

I am obsessed with my 55lb pit mix. He has the most expressive face and loving personality. I think he is going to be a fantastic "big brother". That being said, he is also an animal, and I am not dumb enough to think that he would "never hurt the baby." He has never been around a baby before. There are so many stories about dog bites that could have been prevented if the parent had not left the dog alone with the baby. So he will definitely be closely watched with "little sister" and have certain boundaries, more for his safety and well being than anything else. I would just die if we had to get rid of him because of an easily preventable reason. Also, we just installed a 6' privacy fence so he can have a safe place to get energy out without us having to worry about him getting into trouble.

Frogger5 · March 2015

kaycorey89 said:
Before I got my dog fixed last summer she was allowed anywheres. Bed, couch, basically where she wanted to go haha. Then once she went into heat I started putting a baby gate up between the living room and kitchen to keep her off the furniture. ( she was allowed on furniture in her previous home so was hard to try and break her of it) after she was fixed and healed up. I did let her back in. Then found out I was pregnant. So I started putting the gate back up and only letting her in once and a while. She was crate trained but now she has free roam of the kitchen. Day and night. And it's a pretty decent sized kitchen. She doesn't like it. She sits at the gate and looks in at us I feel bad. Just she's shedding so much and I don't want her in the babys face all the time. Once he's old enough and she's used to him being around then the gate will probably come down.

This makes me sad for your dog. Your plan is to keep her locked in the kitchen until the baby is "old enough"? What does that mean, two years? Three? I'm not a fan of getting rid of pets because you have kids, but in this case it might be better for the dog. And the baby's not even here yet, so right now it's because . . . she sheds? That can't be a surprise. Try brushing or grooming her. Sorry, I know you aren't abusing her or anything, I just imagine how much dogs need to be around their people, and I'm feeling extra emotional these days!

cbrtncanadian · March 2015

This is the every day sleeping position of both of our cats.. Must be right up on the bump snuggled in my chest...

kaycorey89 · March 2015

@Frogger5 I am not getting rid of my dog because of a baby coming along. Nor am I neglecting her or ignoring her. As of this minute she is in the living room with me on the floor in her dog bed. As we are trying to teach her to not be on the furniture. She was abused before I got her so she is very timid. You look at her wrong and she will pee on the floor. She is actually quite spoiled. And I do groom her at least twice a week. The amount of fur that comes out of her is enough to build 2 more dogs, she has medium length hair, and it's thick. I'm thinking you took some of what I said a little out of context. She's a good dog. Just hard to train. You can't even pet her like most dogs. You have to go under her chin and up around to her ears. If not she tries to get away from you and pees on the floor. The baby gate is up to keep her in the kitchen while we are at work. And it's not even attached to the wall. If she really wanted into the living room she could knock it over and go in. Some nights we don't let her in and those are the nights I feel bad. Once she is used to something new in her environment and isn't going to turn aggressive because of the baby being around (I don't think she will, some ppl think she might) then the gate will be down and she can do as she pleases.

SMP21606 · March 2015

Before I became pregnant I trained problem dogs that ranged from aggression to being so timid that they pee if you look in their direction. I am noticing a trend in the different pet owners I see on this page that is alarming, especially if you are going to introduce a baby into the environment. This is by no means to make anyone upset, or challenge how you are training your dogs. In my experience if you are not using consistency in the house then the dog is going to become confused as to what is acceptable and what is not. Telling the animal it isn't acceptable to be on the furniture and then saying it is later, would be rather confusing to anyone. If one person in the house is trying to train a certain way, then everyone in the house will have to follow and be consistent each time for the training to be effective. Otherwise you are dealing with a confused animal and a jealous animal when a baby enters the house. I unfortunately had to take my 3 year old pitt mix to the humane society after neglecting to train him to be around young children. I accept full responsibility for that, it wasn't his fault. Don't look at your dogs as family members, although I know it can be hard. Look at them first as an animal, then as a dog, then as a member of your "pack family". As much as people want to believe that dogs are domesticated, they still have a lot of wolf in them. As soon as dog owners understand dog psychology, there will be no such thing as "problem dogs" because the real problem is almost always the owner.

ksancha · March 2015

I'm not allowed a dog because we rent and I'm allergic to cats so we have two guinea pigs named Belle and Aurora.

Westypet · March 2015

@ksancha
Squeak squeak! Love piggies. I love when you open a fridge around those guys... Squeak squeak!

ksancha · March 2015

@Westypet mine are too far away from the fridge but the second I open a bag or make the kissing noise I make when I feed them you can hear them all the way downstairs

ElRuby · March 2015

kaycorey89 said:
@Frogger5 I am not getting rid of my dog because of a baby coming along. Nor am I neglecting her or ignoring her. As of this minute she is in the living room with me on the floor in her dog bed. As we are trying to teach her to not be on the furniture. She was abused before I got her so she is very timid. You look at her wrong and she will pee on the floor. She is actually quite spoiled. And I do groom her at least twice a week. The amount of fur that comes out of her is enough to build 2 more dogs, she has medium length hair, and it's thick. I'm thinking you took some of what I said a little out of context. She's a good dog. Just hard to train. You can't even pet her like most dogs. You have to go under her chin and up around to her ears. If not she tries to get away from you and pees on the floor. The baby gate is up to keep her in the kitchen while we are at work. And it's not even attached to the wall. If she really wanted into the living room she could knock it over and go in. Some nights we don't let her in and those are the nights I feel bad. Once she is used to something new in her environment and isn't going to turn aggressive because of the baby being around (I don't think she will, some ppl think she might) then the gate will be down and she can do as she pleases.

Why don't you hire a behaviorist to come work with your dog now before baby comes? It's got to be better than having to be locked away...and it might be years before your baby respects your dog's boundaries and that's a long time to be kept separated from the family.

janat1717 · March 2015

My guys have always been allowed on the bed but they have been locked out some nights or choose to sleep elsewhere. Dogs are super trained through rally but I am waiting for kitty to meow nonstop because at the end of the month a baby gate is going up on the master bedroom. Cosleeping so they are out. No worries, husband works from home so they get plenty of attn. still kind of sad though

janat1717 · March 2015

Oh and husband super snores so it may be me and baby and him and dogs at night

aj1327 · March 2015

We have a 12 pound papillon and a black and white cat. My puppy always sits on my lap in the evenings and now the bump is in the way. It cracks me up. He sits on my legs and puts his paws around my belly. Last night he actually got comfy on my bump. He is allowed on furniture and sleeps with us...I don't anticipate either of these things changing. He'll be 12 this summer, so it's too late to change his habits. We'll watch him closely with the baby. He's been around friend's babies, and the only issue is him wanting to lick them when they cry. This could be extremely annoying but I'm thinking that he'll get tired of jumping up every time baby cries.

I'm slightly more concerned about the cat as he roams the house, and we don't know where he is half the time. I really don't want him in the baby's crib and pack n' play. I'm a FTM, so does anyone have advice on this? I'm hoping he'll just keep his distance from the little guy for a while.

mlindzz · March 2015

Just took this photo, poor Moses is having a hard time adjusting to the bump that's always in his way during our cuddle time! Lol

Frogger5 · March 2015

amccoy129 said:
We have a 12 pound papillon and a black and white cat. My puppy always sits on my lap in the evenings and now the bump is in the way. It cracks me up. He sits on my legs and puts his paws around my belly. Last night he actually got comfy on my bump. He is allowed on furniture and sleeps with us...I don't anticipate either of these things changing. He'll be 12 this summer, so it's too late to change his habits. We'll watch him closely with the baby. He's been around friend's babies, and the only issue is him wanting to lick them when they cry. This could be extremely annoying but I'm thinking that he'll get tired of jumping up every time baby cries.

I'm slightly more concerned about the cat as he roams the house, and we don't know where he is half the time. I really don't want him in the baby's crib and pack n' play. I'm a FTM, so does anyone have advice on this? I'm hoping he'll just keep his distance from the little guy for a while.

I also really don't want our cats in the crib and pack and play. We don't know for sure what to do, but we're going to start by setting them up and using the water bottle. They hate it but it doesn't hurt them, and usually we just threaten and they get out of Dodge. I'm also thinking of lining them with aluminum foil (I hear they don't like that) from the time we put them up until the baby arrives - that will hopefully keep them out when we aren't around.

There are pieces of furniture they just choose to never go on, so we just have to figure out how to make baby's sleeping spots like those! Otherwise they won't be able to sleep in the bedroom with us, and I feel very sad to do that to them. Once baby is in his own room we'll just close the door, that will be easy!

KaLikeAWind · March 2015

I have also been wondering how to keep kittehs out of the crib and pack n play. I was also going to use the squirt bottle as a deterrent. I don't know about foil, but I HAVE used one-sided sticky paper to keep them off the counter back in the day. I went out and bought a bunch of the self laminating sheets. Essentially two sheets that stick together, you pull em apart and normally put whatever to be laminated in the middle, then press em back. I just pulled them all the way apart and spread them out. They're not super sticky, but sticky enough to weird out the cat in question.

HoosOnFirst · March 2015

I hadn't even considered that our cat would try to sleep with baby ... Cat seems to dislike noises and disturbance so I suspect he will keep his distance. We did decide to make an upstairs bedroom the nursery instead of the downstairs bedroom, partially due to the cat: if you go up or down stairs, he likes to join you and run in front of your feet. I didn't want to trip over him while carrying the baby!

ElRuby · March 2015

amccoy129 said:
We have a 12 pound papillon and a black and white cat. My puppy always sits on my lap in the evenings and now the bump is in the way. It cracks me up. He sits on my legs and puts his paws around my belly. Last night he actually got comfy on my bump. He is allowed on furniture and sleeps with us...I don't anticipate either of these things changing. He'll be 12 this summer, so it's too late to change his habits. We'll watch him closely with the baby. He's been around friend's babies, and the only issue is him wanting to lick them when they cry. This could be extremely annoying but I'm thinking that he'll get tired of jumping up every time baby cries.

I'm slightly more concerned about the cat as he roams the house, and we don't know where he is half the time. I really don't want him in the baby's crib and pack n' play. I'm a FTM, so does anyone have advice on this? I'm hoping he'll just keep his distance from the little guy for a while.

My cats never went in the crib... They did LOVE the nursery glider and I was OK with them claiming that as a nap zone and they seemed disinterested in any type of work involved in getting in the crib!

aj1327 · March 2015

Thanks for all of the feedback!

@ElRuby I'm okay with him getting on the glider as well. Hopefully he won't want in the crib!

We've talked about spray bottles as well. I guess we'll get it all set up and see what happens.

heatheremanderson · March 2015

I am the proud owner of 5 animals. 3 dogs (two bichon x poodles, one lab x border collie, and 2 cats). They are as much a part of my family as this new LO will be. Although well trained (doing what I do - if I had ill behaved dogs it would be hard for me to approach my clients without feeling hypocritical) we are working on getting them accustomed to new changes and allowing them to investigate new baby items as we bring them in.

AAHA (www.aaha.org) does have some great articles on how to acclimate your pets with the introduction of a new child.

KaLikeAWind · March 2015

I'm hoping this is an appropriate place to share my 'awww' kitty story from this morning, cause I don't really have anyone to 'awww' with me over this.
I woke up really early this morning (before 6am) and wanted to go back to sleep, but as I was dozing off again I kept being rudely awoken by LO, who was going to town with the movement! All kinds of thumps and bumps. Must have been doing jumping jacks mixed with MMA in there! Then here comes Samurai, who crawls up onto my ribs, half laying on the side of the bump, gets comfy and starts to purr. I'm thinking how cute that is (he is, after all, the Ewok Praetorian Guard) and wondering if Ewok can hear or feel him purring, and damned if the kid doesn't calm down in there!
It was just really really cute and I had to share with someone. :x

cag11890 · March 2015

I'm a little late for fur baby Friday but this is definitely been my favorite thread on tmthis site!

ngaines27 · March 2015

This is our 6 month old boxer/lab mix, Saban. He's a super playful boy and is completely unaware of his size/strength. He's never shown any sign of aggression, but he has playfully hurt both my 6 year old and 4 year old. He will run towards them and knock them down just by nudging them with his nose. He's also very territorial of us around other dogs; which makes me a bit nervous. He knows sit, stay, down and go home (his kennel) but doesn't always obey. We love him very much, but if I'm being completely honest, I have to admit that bringing a new baby around him is a bit scary for me. DH doesn't seen worried at all, saying "he's just a puppy, he'll grow out of it." I welcome any advice.

eeyoreem · March 2015

While a good idea to train your animals how to behave around the kids don't forget to train the kids how to behave around the animals. Almost all bites are preventable if you teach your children that dogs/cats are not toys and to respect their space or separate as needed. Our ds 4, had no respect for the dogs personal space so they are separated from him during the day when he's home and awake and so even with a reactive dog we have not had any issues.

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