My Bouvier can't stand my baby!

Question:

I have a 1.5 year old son and my Bouvier cannot handle him well at all! I've always kept them apart until my son was 1 year old, at which point my son learned to be quite gentle with our Bouvier.

However, our Bouvier is not cooperating at all. I've told our Bouvier that it's okay, that our son loves her and he does (he calls for her every morning).

Our son has even fed her several times but I still find her growling at him. We've scolded our Bouvier against growling at our son, but it still happens about once every month.

I am at my wits end. Can someone help?

My husband acquired the Bouvier 2 weeks before I gave birth to my son.

Signed,
Helpless

Answer from Pam Green:

A classic treatment and one which should not make matters any worse goes as follows :

When your child is absent, you and everyone else should totally ignore the dog. little or nothing that is pleasant for the dog should happen in the absence of the child.

As soon as the child approaches within some distance of the dog (initially a fairly large distance, enough that the dog is not reacting unpleasantly to the child) , you and everyone else should start being nice to the dog and pleasant things should happen to the dog. as I said, initially the pleasant stuff should start as soon as the child comes into range of the dog's awareness. then gradually set the distance criteria to shorter and shorter distances, but always keep within a distance that generally the dog reacts either neutrally or with pleasure to his awareness of the child's approach. as soon as the child goes away or goes outside this distance, the good stuff should stop.

The whole idea is that the child's presence and nearness should become associated in the dog's mind with good times and the child's absence with boredom.

You will know you are seeding when you start to see the dog's eyes light up with pleasure as soon as the child comes into view. This is basically a Pavlovian or classical conditioning approach. the child signals pleasantness just as Pavlov's bell signals dinner.

Now this is going to be a really weird way for you to live for a while. and it is essential that your husband go along with the program. it's gonna be tough to ignore and cold-shoulder the dog when your child is absent. But try it for a while and see if things are getting better or worse.

Also NEVER NEVER NEVER leave dog and child together unsupervised !!! That is an essential rule for any child this age as they will do all sorts of things that are annoying or frightening or painful to a dog -- kids just don't know any better. and in this case in addition to protecting the dog from the child, I would agree it would be prudent to protect the child from the dog.

Please also take a look at the two good books , "Dogs and Kids" by Bardi McLennan and "Childproofing your Dog" by Brian Kilcommons.

By the way, tho this advice comes too late for you , it should be remembered by others : it is generally not a great idea to add two new family members so close together in time. It's better to add in one and the wait for that one to be integrated and adjusted into the family before adding another. But I'd assume your husband had been craving a Bouv for some time and so grabbed this one when she was offered -- and maybe he did not ask enough questions about her previous level of socialization with children.

Most Bouvs become very fond of children and are very patient and loving with them. I would have hope that this will work out OK. Kids the age of yours tend to get into a dog's face in a way that most dogs consider to be very rude and so the dog's reply is a "dirty look" eye contact or a grumble (growl) to tell the kid to back off a bit. I'm sending a copy of this to a friend who had similar problem at similar age with her Bouv and applied pretty much the method I have described, as advised by the Behavior service at the UC Davis VMTH.

You should also want to find a veterinary behaviorist, that is a vet who is board certified as a behavior specialist, and consult her/him. I think you will find this a very sound investment. Write to American College of Veterinary Behaviorists c/o Dr Katharin Houpt, College of Vet Med, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-6401. It may help if you can take some videotape of the interactions between the dog and the child so the behaviorist can see exactly what is going on. While a Behavior consultation may seem like a lot of effort (as you may have to drive several hours to reach one -- there arent many of them around) and may seem a bit expensive (probably $100 to 200 -- which is reasonable considering that the first session tends to be lengthy) , when you consider how precious your child is to you and how valued his safety , I think you will see that this is a very wise thing to do and very worthwhile.