we have 18 month old patterdale dog who gets alot ov love and attention from me and my wife we also have a 4 year old girl , so far everything is fantastic the dog and the little girl get on great , but my wife is expecting again and is due in november, i am concerned that the dog may become jealous of the new addition to the family , as the attention move away from him a little, to our new bundle of joy.

can anyone please give some advice on how not to make our dog (lenny) jealous ?

any tips greatfully welcomed

also we have owned 3 patterdales since i was a young boy and they have all been fantastic pets (2 dogs 1 bitch) both the dogs when sniffing the ground start to chatter ther teeth together , i have always wonderd why they do this ??

My whippet chatters his teeth when sniffing the ground, although only when he detects another dog's urine scent. My mini schnauzer has learnt this from him and does as well now. I think they love the scent and find it exciting.

Can't advise about the future new arrival (congrats). I expect someone will come along with some help soon.

Thanks for your reply nicola , i take it both yours are dogs. the bitch i owned did not do this. I dont seem to be getting many replys on how to stop the little patterdale from getting jealous when the baby arrives , people have told me to bring home blankets with the babys smell on them , i dont know if this is the right thing to do.

any advice would be very welcome.

Hi

I didn't post before as have Labs and was not sure about Patterdales temperaments at all.

I had a baby nine weeks ago and one thing we did do is involve them and introduce her to them all the time. let them sniff and lie down next to her etc etc. really not to be too defensive but always supervised.

They were very interested the first few days and now they still greet her and fuss her but she is accepted as one of the pack. They come when she cries to see what is up but most of the time will just ignore her !

We make sure we spent lots of time fussing them and they get plenty of walks etc so they are not put to one side which is often the case when a baby arrives !

HTH

Lucy

thanks for your advice ljs.. we have no intention of letting the dog get pushed to one side but as we have had him from being 5 weeks old , he has had a lot of attention ... im just a little worried that he may feel left out so i think im going to make sure when people come to see the baby they always make a fuss of the dog first.

Hi

We have numerous dogs and 3 children our dogs are *larger* breeds , the youngest of our children is just over a year old.

When she was born , i or my husband held her , took her socks of her feet and we used to let our dogs smell her toes and lick her feet.

And shes the only one of our children that has the closest bond with our dogs , and they are very protective over her.

If done properly dogs and children/babies can mix really well , so i dont think that you are going to have much of a problem.

Good Luck with the new arrival , and i hope everything works out well for you all.

Get the dog used to all the baby equipment and smells, like nappies, prams, cots, talc, baby lotion, everything you can think of. Also have a lot of baby toys around so you can teach the dog that it's not acceptable to play with those. Teach a reliable 'leave' command, and make sure, if the dog is playful, that there are lots of dog toys around and reward the dog well for choosing them over baby toys.

Start getting the dog used to the routine as soon as possible, if you're going to give the dog less attention, start now so that it's not associated with the arrival of the baby. You could try buying a few kongs or other interactive toys and feed the dog using them. Give him the toys filled with food whenever you are doing anything time consuming with the baby. You could give one when you are bathing the baby, so the dog is in the room being ignored and something positive is happening. Try to make sure that whenever the baby is around the dog is happy, if he's the sort that is happy being spoken to, then that's great, you can chat away to him while you do all the baby chores so he's happy when baby is around.

For the first few times the baby cries, have one person make a fuss of the dog while the other attends to the baby. You could have a pot full of chews and then every time the baby cries give the dog a chew. Babies crying is very loud to us, so it must be deafening, and probably painful to a dog with sensitive hearing.

Basically if you can create a positive association with everything that the dog would normally find difficult, you should have no problems.

Congratulations on your new addition, it sounds like he/she will be born into a very happy family.

Jo

Thanks for all your replys he/she is suppose to be a she , well thats what the nice ladys at the hospital says ... lots of great advise thank you all very much ... the dog already knows the 'leave' command , he is quite good (for a patterdale) .

what are kongs?

I have three children and two dogs. each time I brought my babies home I just casually introduced them to the dogs and let the dogs sniff them. I never excluded the dogs and acted as normally as possible, but never left the dogs on their own with the babies - I never had any trouble, it is really the crawling stage that is more difficult as ears etc get pulled. One of my children nearly stuck a pencil somewhere rather unfortunate!