Question:

Hi,  Alex is too young to play with this dog. Get dog into traing program so he learns how to play.                                                     Bob Maida

Response:

Our almost 9 month male sheltie pup is having a little bit of a problem with small children. I have a 2 year old nephew(Alex) and the Sheltie (Cedric) doesn’t know how to behave around him, understandably because we have no children.  They only see each other occasionally, but we’d like to train Cedric to behave better with kids. Our problem is we don’t have any for training purposes. I know some of it is just puppy energy/dog adolesence, but is there anything else we can be doing? I also think some of the problem is that Cedric and Alex loved to play run and chase about 5 months ago (when cedric was wee and non-aggresive in the utmost.) Greg Z

Response:

|> Our almost 9 month male sheltie pup is having |> a little bit of a problem with small children. |> |> I have a 2 year old nephew(Alex) and the Sheltie (Cedric) |> doesn’t know how to behave around him, understandably because |> we have no children.  They only see each other occasionally, |> but we’d like to train Cedric to behave better with kids. |> Our problem is we don’t have any for training purposes. |> I was in a similar situation, I don’t have kids but occasionally I have friends and relative who visit with kids. When my dog was about a year old she started to get nervous and distant with kids. I wanted her to be friendly with kids. Fortunately for me, in my neighbourhood there are a number of children, so I started to bring cookies with me when I take my dog out for a walk. If a kid is obviously friendly and aks to pet my dog, I offered him a cookie to feed the dog. The kid is delighted and the dog now has associated kids with good things so she is really friendly. The only bad points is that the kids on my street now expect us to stop everytime we walk by. And some nights, on the walk the dog is getting a lot of cookies.  I buy cookies for small dogs and split them in half so that she doesn’t get too many cookies. I also had to explain to the kids that evening walks are fine for petting and feeding the dog but morning walks are for walking. — Michele Guillet                         The Communications Research Centre         3701 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA, K2H 8S2  

Response:

>Our almost 9 month male sheltie pup is having >a little bit of a problem with small children. >we have no children.   >Our problem is we don’t have any for training purposes.

Greg Good suggestion from Michele Guillet. When I socialized my puppy with kids, I went to school playgrounds and let the pup watch from the sidelines. Everytime school was out, a swarm of children came buzzing out of the building so I went armed with tons of tiny goodies for willing participants to give my puppy. We went to many different schools so she could get accustomed to children of varying age groups. Gwen Perfect Paws, Inc.  Dog Behavior & Training Center  San Francisco URL:  http://www.perfectpaws.com "…and having created the dog, on the seventh day God rested."

Response: