# Teaching dogs to be gentle with kids



## matthewm11 (Oct 18, 2011)

i have a female 14 month GSD/Husky mix. She adores all people, but has a special fondness for Kids. She even lived with a very young (3ish) son with the family I adopted her from, although I am not sure she a lot of attention since she was confined in the front yard. Actually one reason I felt Indy was the dog for me was watching this kid hug, squeeze her, grab her tail etc and all the why she was laying down happlilly putting up with the kid's annoyence.

Here is my dilemna. I currently live in a single BR apt with only a small yard. I make it work for Indy by taking on long walks and/or offleas runs so that when inside the apartment she rests. Ideally I want to find a bigger place. I looked at a beautiful place this evening with a young coupke who live in my current complex. They also need room for when their 3 year old son three days a week.

Cash, the three year old lives with a big pitbull/boxer at his other home so is used to big dogs and he and Indiana (my dog) play well together. My problem is stopping from jumping on kids and knocking them over accidentally. She's learned not to jump pn adults, I just haven't had the resouces to teach her not to jump on kids. Know I do have a resource; a brave and willing 
3 year old

Any suggestions of safe training techniques to teach Indy how to tone down the excitement with kids??

BTW, I would never leave a kid and a dog alone unnatended, and have her leashed and fully in my controll when around kids. I just hope with Cash around I can teatch her to be gentle around him


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## llombardo (Dec 11, 2011)

Since she is older it should be easier to train her not to jump on kids...I shouldn't talk, that is the only thing I'm presently working on with my 7 month old GSD. They just get so excited when they see the kids I would start off by making sure the dog is always in a sit position before the 3 year old or anyone can pet her, give her lots of praise and treats for staying still You might be surprised how fast they learn the boundaries when it comes to little ones, lots of dogs can sense it and will calm down with little ones. Of course there still might be the knocking over every now and then and a baby crying but its all good....my dogs used to steal the bottles from the babies...I found it funny, but the babies didn't


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## matthewm11 (Oct 18, 2011)

Thanks for the advice llombardo. I do the same thing, put her in a sit position and then have the child approach. She will sit there happily lapping up the attention We were once approached by a very young girl and her Mother who asked if the dog was friendly and whether her daughter could pet her. I put her in a down and the toddler happily petted Indy all over and she was loving every second of it. Random passer-bys at the park were commenting on how gentle Indy was with this girl.

Unfortuently its not always such a sweet scene. My problem with putting her in a sit or down to wait for the child to approach us is that if the child is a little frightened or intimidated and doesn't walk towards Indy she will get very impatient and will get up and try to pull towards the child (which of course scares the child more) This wont be an issue for Cash, but maybe I can have him pretend to be wary of approaching her while I make sure she stays down.

Another issue is running and screaming kids. When I used to take her to the dog park, anytime a young child would be running around screaming (which btw seems terribly dangerous to bring a young child to a dog park and is one reason why we stopped going) she would get excited and run over to greet them by licking their face. One time she poked a poor kid in the eye with her long, narrow snout trying to lick his face. I found that if she approached a child at the dog park I would tell the child if he got nervous to pick up a tennis ball and throw it in the opposite direction. She once ended up playing fetch with this kid for a good 45 minutes at the park, it was adorable.

All in all she is not at the point where I feel comfortable having her offleash around children she doesn't know well. I hope that Cash can help me teach her to chill out a little around kids. Sorry for any rambling and/or spelling errors, I woke up for a midnight snack (its 3:30 am where I live) and wanted to see if anyone replied to my earlier post whilie I eat these waffles. :crazy: Thanks agsin llombardo


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