I have one significant parenting goal.  And oddly enough (or rather maybe not odd in reality), it’s something that I don’t have perfect control over.

My goal is simple once we have a child, that our dog does not eat our baby.

Our dog, she is delightful.  She is well trained, in fact when she was young and we realized she’d be a big dog we hired a private trainer to help ensure she’d be a wonderful dog.  She is a rescue dog with an unknown start in life.  She joined our family at 9 weeks old and we’ve given her nothing but love and security.   To be fair to her, she has never and I cannot imagine ever would hurt a fly.  Yet, she’s 90 lbs and so even though she is well trained, ensuring she doesn’t ever do anything, even accidentally to eat (or even just hurt) our baby is a legitimate concern.

And so, for months now I have been telling the dog, nearly daily,

Please don’t eat the baby.  You’ll be an amazing big puppy sister, just don’t eat the baby.

And so, Mr. MPB and I will do everything in our power to never leave our dog alone with our child.  To never leave them together unsupervised.  To never trust the dog, no matter how much we love her.  In fact, in an attempt to keep our child and dog separate in specific spaces, to this day, our dog has never been allowed in he nursery and we intend to keep it this way.

We play with her ears, her mouth, her tail and her paws.  We even make a point to interrupt her eating to help reduce the chances of her becoming food protective. We want to help her be an amazing big furry sister.

We plan to give our dog space to be around the baby.  We will make it a top priority that our dog does not see her life routine altered too much when baby joins our lives.  We will continue to ensure she is walked, well fed and loved.

As our child gets a bit older, we will work to ensure our child is trained to respect our dog.  Our child will know simple things like not going around the dog while she eats.

We cannot guarantee that they will be best friends.  Yet, I’m pretty sure if we set them both up for success as co-inhabitants of our house, they will become best friends!  Seriously, what kid doesn’t love a friendly dog?  And what dog doesn’t love kids who drop food on the ground?  It just makes sense that they should be friends.

I figure so long as our dog doesn’t eat our baby, we will be able to get through most baby things!

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Anyone with dogs have any advice on how to integrate dogs and babies?  How to help foster their friendship?  Or how to help the dog adjust to a baby human in the house?

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