 |
||
Your Dog and Your Baby |
||
|
Silvia Kent's experience as a mother and as a dog behavior expert combines in Your Dog and Your Baby: A Practical Guide, available both as an ebook and as a book. I think it is an excellent tool for anyone thinking to combine dogs and small children. As she says, "I brought up two kids with dozens of rescued problem dogs around, and they're fine, healthy, now 21 and 11 respectively, and without a single tooth mark to show between them!" The book is designed to prevent potential problems between dogs and children and to enable people to keep their dogs, secure in the knowledge that they have created a good environment for people and dogs.
Since babies and toddlers grab onto things, it is essential to have a dog who enjoys being touched and is tolerant of some rough handling. The book begins with a process you can use to get your dog used to being handled all over, by yourself first and then by others. Next there is a discussion of exercise. A woman who took her dog for long walks during pregnancy will suddenly find the situation very different once the baby has arrived. Before that is the time to teach the dog to walk on a loose lead, and Silvia Kent explains how to do that. The Exercise Action Plan has more ideas, too! One I liked was teach your dog to retrieve and you can exercise it right in the house! Food and table manners, toys, sleeping places, jealousy and attention, hygiene, safety, aggression, and training your baby are all discussed, each with their own Action Plan. These plans are often quite easy to do. And what a difference they can make in the safety and well-being of all concerned! Silvia Kent also discusses the hard reality that in some situations, the best choice may be not to keep the dog. She looks sympathetically at the questions of finding the dog a new home or having it euthanized, and describes the options. The book ends with a useful section on how to train the dog to walk nicely, use a crate, greet people, and do some tricks and games. I specially liked the check list of things your dog should be able to do, divided up chapter by chapter so you know where to get help in the text. For example, here are the questions from Chapter One, Handling:
I highly recommend Your Dog and Your Baby! Silvia Kent says, "No other book I have written has received so much response - I have boxes and boxes of letters from women and grandparents all over the world, thanking me." Get it for yourself, or it would make a great gift! Available as an ebook...
Or maybe you would rather get the whole Silvia Kent package, which consists of Dynamic Dog Training, Overcoming Dog Behavior Problems, Your Dog and Your Baby, Take the Class (a manual for dog training instructors), and The Harmony Program. The links take you to my pages reviewing each title, or click here to buy the entire collection for $47.87, which is about a 40% reduction from the $78.55 they would cost if ordered one by one. .. and as a bookIt's available for $12.95 from Dogwise. and Amazon has it too:
"A superb book, written with compassion and enthusiasm that will stop dogs being put down and re-homed unnecessarily on the one hand, and on the other hand will save many a child from the terrible trauma of being bitten by a family pet. An absolute must-have." Roy Hunter, President, Anglo American Dog Training |
||
Do
you have a dog and you're going to start a family, or do you have
a baby or small children and are thinking of getting a dog? 
A
variety of topics are covered, each with its own Action Plan. Some
enjoyable cartoons illustrate the points.
