Growling At Baby

[Guest evanderleeuw]

Looking for advice from anyone who has dealt with a grey that showed signs of aggression toward their children, particularly a baby. I have an eleven month old that my grey is quite nervous around and will growl and snarl at her if she gets too close when crawling around.

Edited December 19, 2014 by evanderleeuw

[Time4ANap]

Your grey doesn't like having his/her space invaded. This is normal. It is not really aggression, but a warning before aggression happens.

 

The baby and all children need to be kept away from the hound's personal space (dog bed, dog toys, anywhere the dog is sleeping, etc). It is important that all family members and any visitors follow the rule of respecting the hound's space. Please remember that until your hound moved in to a home, he/she had their own space in a crate, and was not used to being approached when sleeping or or suddenly being touched and startled, which would cause them to become defensive. This is all normal stuff.

 

Until the child is old enough to understand that the hound needs to be left alone when sleeping, any contact needs to be supervised, and only when the hound welcomes it. We use a rule with our hound who has sleep startle that there is no petting or touching unless he is standing up. That way we know he's awake. Greys will sleep with their eyes open, so that standing rule is one of the best to utilize in this situation.

 

There are some people here who have been able to train their hounds out of startling, but it comes with time. I'm sure some of them will respond when they see this.

 

Good luck.

[greysmom]

First, I don't have and have never had, kids, so no first hand experience from that side.

 

Some greys are just extremely nervous and anxious around small wiggly things. Especially when they are creeping and crawling around and making loud screeching noises at random intervals. They are just way too unpredictable for some greys nerves. This may pass, or it may not. Unfortunately, you won't know until you watch the kid grow up and the dog react. For everyone's sake, do NOT let the child crawl around anywhere near the dog. Get a crate, get an xpen, baby-gates, chain link sections - whatever you need to do to keep them safely apart.

 

Most of all, never, never, never, never leave your child alone with the dog. Never. Not even for a few seconds. You know how fast babies can move. You know how fast greyhounds can move. A tragedy can occur in just a few seconds.

 

Hopefully, more child-friendly grey owners can chime in with helpful advice.

[sarabz]

I have an almost 10 month old and he is never, ever allowed on Bella's bed or crate. She will sometimes growl at him if he gets close to her but we are very, very careful to not let him invade her space if she is in one of those two spots. If she is lounging elsewhere we try not to let him get close but we are also teaching her (as we have for many years) that the spots that are truly hers where she is not disturbed are her bed and crate. She has other spots in the house where she can go, too.

[GeorgeofNE]

This is a matter that requires the adults in the room to change their behavior, since what the dog is doing is perfectly reasonable, and you cannot expect a baby to understand.

 

Put the dog in another room when the baby is crawling around. Problem solved. I believe there is a good book about dogs and babies? Like Greysmom, I don't have kids, but I was a kid in a house with dogs, and since my parents had their dog well before they had us, and loved him like family, they knew it was their job to protect him from us, and not vice versa!

[turbotaina]

Colleen Pelar's book is really good and here's her site: Living with Kids and Dogs.

[Time4ANap]

In my post above I forgot to suggest looking at some of the other posts on this topic. You will see that this is a pretty common thing with a new baby, or a new dog that is all of the sudden around a baby. Use the search function on the site and use terms like startle, sleep startle, aggression or space aggression, toddler, etc...

 

It's also important to know that no one who responds to this is pointing fingers. This is a learning experience and only you can control the situation. It is always difficult to word a response regarding a baby and a pet without making it sound like someone is doing something wrong. Sometimes the words in the response can be taken that way. People here on GT are passionate about this topic because there are situations that have happened previously where the child or hound have been injured, and we've all seen those cases where an accident occurs and suddenly the hound or other pet is in the news for "attacking" the child when in fact, what was playing out was normal dog behavior. As human as a greyhound seems at times, they are still a dog, and will have those behaviors. We don't want to see anyone go through that and have to deal with the fallout.

[Guest lynne893]

I'm glad you posted this question because we just had a baby and I'm very nervous about the stage when the baby is crawling around and starting to walk.

 

Our house is old and small (1,000 sf) and there's not a heck of a lot of floor space, so I know that keeping our two hounds apart from the baby is going to be challenging. We'll probably get xpens (which we've never used before) to divide our living room. The poor dogs already have very little space!

 

So far, in baby's 6 weeks with us, the dogs went from traumatized seeming (the up all night hours, the screaming and crying...) to tolerant. We've slowly introduced the baby into the same room as them (though NEVER unsupervised and usually not in a swing or a bed or anything-- just in our arms for the most part) and they've gotten to the point where they're ignoring him when he cries.

 

Any additional advice to the original poster or generally is appreciated. I'm all ears too!

[Guest MinigoldstarJ]

I had my first 3 greys before I had kids. It was a trip! My first son was always in the dogs faces and we had a tiny house. He was constantly supervised never alone with the dogs and not allowed to get in their personal space. With my daughter we moved into a big home and the dogs were all seniors at this time and had their own space. My daughter wasn't patticularly interested in them. My little guy was born and my last grey was 11 and just kept her distance when he was old enough to walk around. She passed in August at 12. My new dog is a young grey and he has growled a few times as the little one crosses the line. I am just always right there or close enough to get the toddler away before he startles the dog. It's a vigilant job but stay aware and make sure the dog has space that is free from little children.