Lisa Edwards - Please Dont Bite the Baby (and Please Dont Chase the Dogs): Keeping Our Kids and Our Dogs Safe and Happy Together

Copyright 2015 Lisa J. Edwards

Seal Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

1700 Fourth Street

Berkeley, California

sealpress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-58005-578-9

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover and interior design by Domini Dragoone

Author photo with Indy and Pinball by Jill Ferson

Printed in the United States of America

Distributed by Publishers Group West

Please Dont Bite the Baby is dedicated to all the parents who love their children and love their not-quite-so-perfect dogs, to all the dogs who have lost their homes or lives because they didnt know what to do with their new tiny family member, and to all the children whose family has a dog.

Contents

W e love our dogs. They are family and they love us unconditionally. We believe they will love our children, too, and they usually do. However, this love is not always enough to prevent the more than 4.5 million dog bites the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates occur annually in the United Statesthat equals a dog bite every seven seconds. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, every forty seconds someone seeks medical attention for a dog biterelated injury, and 70 percent of the total dog bites annually (3.15 million) injure children under the age of fifteen.

In contrast, the number of swimming-related injuries for children under fourteen is just under four thousand per year. When I compare the four thousand annual swimming-related injuries to the over three million dog biterelated injuries, I am left scratching my head. I wonder why people tell me they dont worry about leaving their dog alone with their kids, but those same people would never dream of letting their children swim alone.

People assume their good dog and their children will be fine together. Not only do the statistics tell us to be more careful, the tragic experiences of too many individuals speak to the necessity for more vigilance. As you read this book and apply the basic tips I have outlined, you will help keep your baby safe from your dog, and your dog safe from your baby so your children can grow up with their whole familytwo- and four-leggedand look back with love and affection on their first doggie love.

B efore I had any notion I would have a baby in my life, I frequently worked with clients whose dogs behavioral problems fell into the dog-baby or dog-toddler category. I remember one smart Schipperke in particular. She was the only dog who ever figured out how to unzip my treat baga red flag. She was too smart, enthusiastic, and driven.

I asked the parents if anything had changed in her life when the baby arrived. They said no and then outlined the dogs issues: She jumps up on the kitchen chairs and begs for food at the table. She growls and bites at us when we push her off. She wont get off the bed, and she barks and growls at the baby when hes playing.

I asked a little more and they said, We always used to let her sit on the chairs and feed her at the table... then the baby came, and we stopped that. Clearly, they didnt realize they had actually changed a lot.

I watched how their son played around the dog. Pushing a toy lawn mower that made a scary noise, he chased the ten-pound dog around the apartment while Mom and Dad laughed, until the Schipperke turned on the menacing lawn mower and growled. Then they yelled at the dog.

This dogs life had been turned upside-down when the baby appeared and went from bad, when so many things in her life had changed, to scary, when the little boy was allowed to frighten her daily. Its hard to tell parents that their baby is tormenting their dog, and it is even harder to help people realize and accept that they and their child have contributed to their dogs dangerous behavior. I struggled to convince these parents that allowing their son to do whatever he wanted to with this dog was dangerous. In the end, management, training, and guidance allowed them to keep the little dog they loved with them through a second child and beyond.

Without the realization that we as parents have to protect our dogs from our babies in order to protect our babies from our dogs, we may find ourselves facing one of the worst choices in our livesbetween the safety of our baby and the life of our dog.

With a bit of mindfulness and preparation, most of us can avoid ever having to make this choice.

FOR THE FIRST TEN YEARS of our marriage, my husband, Lawrence, was opposed to having children. We both knew the statistics regarding abuse passing from one generation to the next, and unfortunately both of us experienced childhood abuse, which I detailed in A Dog Named Boo: The Underdog with a Heart of Gold. I was hopeful that years of learning to understand our upbringings, along with our slightly oddball sense of humor, would allow us to break the cycle, but Lawrence was not convinced. It would be when it would be was my refrain and, meanwhile, my dogs offered me an outlet for my mothering instincts.

Atticus, my first dog, was there for me before my husband entered the picturein fact, Atticus introduced me to Lawrence. The first words I said to Lawrence were, What are you doing to my dog? I walked in on him trying to engage Atticus in a chase game with the Baby Dino-Roarone of the many dog toys scattered around the office. Atticus was happily complying, which meant Lawrence was on Atticuss approved list.

I will always be grateful to Atticus for introducing me to my husband and for bringing me through some of the darker times of my life as I processed my past. I learned lessons from that devoted dog I never learned from my human familyhow to love unconditionally and without being violated. After finding me my husband, Atticus seemed to conspire with Lawrence to find Dante at a dog run in the East Village. Not usually a big player at dog parks, Atticus was actively playing with the emaciated yet gregarious and joyful Dante. Between bouts of play, Atticus would return to my spot on the bench as if to check in and Dante would follow him. At each of these check-ins Atticus, Dante, and Lawrence would all employ their big begging eyes in support of Lawrences case for bringing Dante home with us. A few years later, I found Boo when I stumbled upon his litter one fateful Halloween. They had been dumped outside a pet store that could best be compared to the shop from the Stephen King novel, Needful Things. This pet store, like Stephen Kings store, disappeared without a trace a month after I found Boo.