I kind of have two things rolling around in my mind so lets hope I can tie them together for this topic.

First thing I’m thinking about is that most kids started back to school today up here in Minnesota. This means that there will be kids walking & biking to and from school or walking to the bus stop. The second thing is that I’m sick of hearing about a dog mauling/attacking a child.

So I thought this might be a good weekly discussion. Can we talk about kids and dogs? How do we teach our kids or teach our dogs to be safe around each other? What do we all do to help prevent a bad situation for our kids & dogs.

(For those of you who don't have kids - do you do anything to make sure your dog is safe around kids? What would that be?)

Since I have no children. I know which one or ones of my dogs are fine with kids and who isn't. The fine with kids are allowed to play with any visiting kids, the not fine with kids it depends what the problem is. Cheyenne is a very kind dog, but there is nothing soft or female about her unless you are a puppy or a kitten. She is just a bit too rough with kids, Raya is a resource guarder so not the one I would want to be around kids. Lakota has the best temperament around kids, he is very watchful and throttles back his speed and is always on the look out for a running child. My dogs are all good on leash and will tolerate kids running up on the except Raya because I am her resource she guards.

I wrote an article on how to stay safer around dogs and do talk about the biking and running etc. If you'd like to read it, it's here:

http://www.rileysplace.org/388/understanding-dog-bite-behavior-or-dont-blame-the-dog-when-it-bites/

Thanks Deb for the article, I'll try to read it later.

I can actually find a lot of articles online about this but was hoping to get a discussion going about it. Sometimes there is great advice shared between us all when we share our first hand experiences and things we've learned.

I don't have kids either, Lots of nephews tho (good guinea pig material for puppies LOL).

My previous dogs, now passed, never really had a problem with kids , bikes, rollerblades, stuff like that, kids coming over.

The dogs I have now, the 2 aussies and Masi (gsd),..the aussies are fine with kids, not real big slobbering all over you types, tolerate them well.

Masi is ok with kids that are taller than eye level, seems the eye level and smaller just aren't for her..She just seems uncomfortable with them, so I really don't allow any interaction with kids she is unfamiliar with at all just to be on the safe side.

Rollerblading, bikes, when she was very young, probably not really having encountered them, she would bark and lunge at them. sooooo to get her used to those two things,,first allowed her to check them out minus the kids, then had her watch kids rollerblading, smacking the blades, that type of thing, rode around her,,kept upping the ante..She's fine with those things now, they don't hold any interest for her.

We got Ember as an adult through a rescue, and our top priority when looking for a dog was one who was good with kids.

On the kids' end, we teach them not to be rough with her, or hug her. We told them dogs don't like hugs the way people do. Since they're kinda young, their faces are right on her level, so we are very careful with this. Even though Ember is not into guarding her food, they are also not allowed to bother her when she's eating or chewing a bone. They are also not really allowed to play ball with her because she kinda loses her mind when a tennis ball appears...

On Ember's end, we have taught her not to take food from them. She licked a cheese stick my youngest had the other day, but I can't ever remember her taking a piece of food from them. When we first got her, we just made it clear that if they have food in their hands, she has to stay away. We also had to work with her a lot at first NOT to snatch toys out of people's hands. She did it to adults too, but it was more dangerous with the kids. She gets really excited as I said when toys are around, so we had to teach her NEVER to take them out of our hands. Saved us all a few fingers...

That's pretty much it. She LOVES my kids, they are her favorite people. Just this afternoon my youngest was involving her in his playing and she didn't bat an eye. Bikes, strollers, noise, etc don'tbother her at all.

I forgot to mention that we also make sure she complies with the kids when they give a command. She is required to listen to them the same way she listens to us.

Cujo was two when my sister got her kids, they were ten months and twelve months.

She lives 1 1/4 hour from my parents' who own Cujo.

One of her girls had a dog in her foster home, that she did not like according to her foster mom. The dog was pretty much outside, I gather and had no real access to the baby.

Cujo is big and loud and intimidating, and frankly the children scared him as much as he scared them. Also, my mother is main resource. The first visit was scary. I was making it worse by hanging onto the dog or calling him away. I was on edge the entire time.

They put up a pet yard in the living room, for the girls, not Cujo. Elena liked the quiet old dog, but did not like Cujo. But analisa liked Cujo.

Elena would try to be brave, Cujo knocked her down at least once and held her there with his paw. Still, Mom was determined that the dog would not be crated while the girls were over.

The girls outgrew the pet yard. Cujo became more careful with them, they became braver. Analisa walks around with her hand on his butt. Elena likes him now too. They will be five soon. They taught him how to be around little ones. He has been stellar around Andrea -- my other sister's baby who is now 18 months old. No pet yard for her. She did not put up with that for a second. She pushes Cujo around. (I think he lets her.)

Cujo is not thrilled when the little attention grabbers get close to his special resource-people Mom and I, but he seems to realize that they are only here temporarily and they must be endured.

He is a great baby-dog now.

If you have dogs from puppyhood, socializing them to kids appropriately is great. Making it an enjoyable, rewarding experience for the dog helps.

If you get the dogs older, then it's the same thing, you just need to be safer about it. That may involve something like systematic desensitization and there may be a point where you realize, hey, this dog is never going to totally dig kids. That's where body blocking and being firm with parents and children comes in. I have found that "she's shy" "she's afraid of you!" goes a lot farther with both than any other thing I have said or done. Kids seem to get that.

I firmly believe kids and dogs need to be supervised for the safety and benefit of both. I think people allow their kids liberties with dogs because they think the dog likes it, and I think there are dogs who do, but I also think that there are dogs who tolerate it, and probably cannot wait for that kid to grow up or for school to start, etc. That we need to be aware of age and illness in the dogs, and crate and rotate as that happens. Just like we need to be aware of cranky, tired, sick in kids.

I just read a study that said the bite prevention stuff we teach kids is important, but most/more important is parental supervision. I would imagine parental supervision by someone dog savvy would reduce bites further.

With Oz, he is never out front without a leash and in the back our gate latch is so high, I can barely get it, so we know he's somewhat safe there. We have kids all around us, he seems fine when they are outside in their yards and everybody here is really good about asking if a ball goes over a fence or whatnot. On walks most kids are good about asking to pet him, and he sits and lets them. At the park if I'm alone, he's tied off to a bench, or if dh is with us he's alternated between us.
When we brought home the baby we kept them pretty far apart. Maybe it was a mistake, but I didn't want to have a disaster. Oz did try to give the baby his Cuz when she first came home. We had a bit of an issue with toys, now we take away Oz's toys from the baby and he's learned the baby's aren't his. Except her first teething ring, Oz had a "toy" lost under the couch, laying beside the couch, sighing, whining, dh looks under the couch, pulled out the teething ring, handed to me, I stuck it in the dishwasher and now it stays in the play pen. I keep them separated by gates and obstacles, except in the basement, but Oz will just move if she gets close, or we grab her. It's gotten alot better, crying happens seldom, if she falls or wakes up and we aren't there and Oz is learning the high pitched noises are happy noises. He will let her pet him and she feeds him from her high chair. In case anyone wondered, dogs DO like Baby Mum-mums. Most interesting, he has started sleeping on the bed, when she is there with us. He hadn't done that for a long time! When we'd have her in her swings or bouncy chairs, Oz could alert us to a dirty diaper, my daughter doesn't cry if she's dirty. He goes on walks with us, he's still included in everything and it seems to be getting better. I think he's seeing her as a little human. She occasionally will say "Hi" when you say it to her, but she sees Oz or a dog similar, all you hear is "Ollie, blah, bah, da" So her first word will probably be Ozzy, it could be Ollie, if Oz would consent to us changing his name When we went to the pet show the other day there was a black Great Dane in a princess dress (owner and pet dressed alike) I keep telling Oz if he misbehaves I'll let Jess put him in a princess dress and take him to the fair. He has no clue what I'm saying, but does give me a dirty look regardless!

My own children grew up with german shepherds, they were kissed sloppy by Morgan from the day they came home from the hospital. Morgan nosed their butts and taught them to crawl young. She was always right there to grab onto when they were learning how to walk. She herded them out of trouble when they were toddlers. Morgan taught them to respect dogs.

They were 2 1/2 and 4 when we started interviewing dogs to be Otto's parents. I don't remember having to correct the children, even that young, with all the big adult dogs we met. It was sort of a pre-requisite to my interviewing a breeder. If the dogs are not good with preschoolers, it's not the dog to be my next dog's parents. otto's grandsire Treu, he jumped up on the couch with my boys and looked at them like 'wussup, little dudes?', after he kissed my daughter 'Oh Hello little blonde lady!'

So by the time Otto came home, it was a non issue. He was so solid and stable even as an 8 week old, there were only a couple of things to teach the kids (I should write a pamphlet on bite inhibition for preschoolers)

I offer my children, supervised by me of course, to childless friends and neighbors who are trying to socialize their puppy. Random people on the street with a puppy, my kids are so very good about asking if they can pet the puppy. Not so good about not flash mobbing the puppy. I always have to remind them one at a time but that goes for a lot of things with Heaton's Horde...

Morgan was not so good with children until she was 2 and had her own. She's still a bit concerned about older taller boys. Girls not at all because she's always liked women. Whatever happened to her as a puppy (before I had her) was definitely at the hands of a man. She's never trusted men, especially men over the 5'9" my husband was. Also does not trust tween/teen boys with that chirpy turning into a man voice.

Sidebar: my neighbor really bothers her, as soon as he opens his mouth, you can tell he's gay. He's shorter than Bobby was and we're fabulous friends so I know it's his voice that bothers her.

Enough about my fabulous children, on to other people's children.

Otto is solid as a rock with kids. He loves people and children, he's just the random outgoing friendly GSD. He's learned not to be pushy as he's grown into an adult. Maybe it's the small touch of GSD aloofness that he has. Maybe he's learned that he is an intimidating looking dog. He doesn't do that overconfident Bogart thing Luther used to do - I LOVE YOU, I will make you love ME.

Kids who like dogs just flock to him and I don't have enough breath to teach every single one to ask him if he wants to be petted. Usually kids do ask, he's got that big head and those intense eyes so they do ask.

Often times I see a child who's looking at him and smiling like they want to pet him but the parent is trying to herd the child away from him. Don't let the dingo eat my baby! In those cases I always say it's okay and he's very friendly, he lives with 3 small children. Otto's trained to sit when I stop walking so that usually puts someone's mind at ease and they let their child pet him. He's so soft and friendly, I like to think he's good for scared parent/big dog relations.

Sometimes we run into a kid who wants to pet Otto but the parent is oh no no no, get him away. Even if my own kids are there (that happened just last weekend at the farmers mkt). I always feel bad for those kids because the parent's fears will prevent them from learning to how to relate to a dog. Which hopefully won't get them bit when they're like 10 or 12 and want to bullrush on a dog and hug it.

Morgan is a totally different story. She's pretty and being much smaller than Otto, she's not intimidating looking (mistake!). She's been the victim of countless driveby pettings. (*)

Morgan wants to be asked if someone can pet her. She reserves the right to say no. With her, I ALWAYS TRY make children ask if they can pet her. She's a good teacher and very tolerant of children but sometimes she's just not in the mood to be touched by some random person or she's got something else on her mind. She's bitchy like that. I would be a negligent handler if I didn't understand and respect that.

(*)Random driveby pettings - it's almost always boys! My signature move is to reach over and ruffle their hair while they're touching my dog without asking.

Each one teach one, they'll never do THAT again. Some of them have said What'd you do that for???? All horrified some lady touched them like their mom would. So I tell them that's exactly when you just did to my dog, thought we were friends.

Smaller children, preschoolers or kindergartners, I'll put my hand on Morgan's muzzle and teach them how to ask a dog if you can pet it. This usually conveys the message to the parent that maybe they've missed teaching their child something! It also lets the parent know I take their child's safety seriously. Most of the time, the parent reminds the child they;ve been told not to just fun up to a dog. SOmetimes the parent gets a little tude with me but that's their problem, not mine or my dog's.

Both my dogs were naturally good with kids (we don't have any). We even had one girl "walk" Levi (I was also holding the leash). They loved kids. Then, one day, and nice little girl asked if she could pet the dogs (her dad was there). Instead of petting Levi, she hit him. Levi jumped and hid behind my husband. DH then went towards the kid (and I forget all that happened in the conversation here, it has been several years) and her dad to say something like "he has big teeth and you shouldn't hit dogs you don't know) and her dad says she does that all the time to their dog. So, we spent the next couple of years passing out treats to kids to give to the dogs (Leyna saw this and didn't want to be around kids anymore either) so they wouldn't shy away anymore. They are good now, but will sometimes walk away after they have had enough. I now *always* ask the parents if their kids are good with dogs before any kid is allowed to pet either dog. Most people are kind of taken aback by that question because they think my dogs aren't friendly, but I always explain what happened and they understand.

I wish we got adopters like you.
I'd never hesitate to adopt to people with kids.
As a rule, anymore, we don't adopt to people w/kids under 7 due to people expecting dogs to take anything and everything kids dish out.
Very sad, since I've had dogs in my life my entire life and had the best experiences growing up with them!

I will say though that, even though my kids are not allowed to mess with her while she's eating, that doesn't mean we never do. Once in a while I will go over and take her bone away or stick my hand in her dish and take some food out to hand feed her, just to make sure she's still on an even keel. The fact that my kids aren't allowed it just mostly as a double safety. She's never guarded her food but JUST IN CASE...

With strange kids, Ember can be a little shy. Sometimes when people walk up to her like they intend to pet her she backs away. If they ignore her and she makes the first move though, she's good.

I thought about giving treats to kids to give her, but if the kids are jumpy about it, teeth might touch fingers and parents think my dog bit their kid....yikes.

My little boy is 27 and married and we do not know a lot of people with kids. SO I had to work on socializing with kids. Kayos has always been wonderful with kids. Havoc is a another story. He was sick when we got him so we did not get him out as much as we should have. He has always been a little uncomfortable with kids at the 4 to 7 age range and older kids that stare at him. We work on it still even tho he is 4 and make sure to read him carefully before letting him approach kids.

You'd be amazed at how gentle GSDs can be.
I remember our older guy Yaeger that passed away last year, once I took him to the baseball field when my son was playing.
He was a very great, polite dog - everything a GSD ought to be.
These little girls came over and wanted to feed him and I thought their mothers were going to have a heart attack. He stood taller than them, they were 5-6yrs., I'd say.
Anyway - the mothers were chatting and just froze like deer in headlights when the girls came over, and the girls held out whatever it was they were eating, for him to take a bite of.
He was so gentle that they kept dropping the stuff, he was barely opening his mouth, for fear he'd accidentally touch or graze one with a tooth.
As soon as the moms saw how careful and gentle he was being, they relaxed and went back to chatting.
I was so proud of him...

Awww sweet Yaeger! I've noticed big male shepherds tend to have such great affection for little girls, especially if they don't have one. When Rex was a pup, my sisters daughters were 3 and newborn. My sister would come visit for the weekend with her little daughters. Rex would get so excited, his tail whacking the structural support wall in the front hall made the whole house shake! He was always so gentle with them.

Dawn's Big King Brady loves all the friend's daughters, fawns over them. My DD with the Biggie. Jackie has her own dogs to hug but she HAS to hug Brady, he's like a big black bear compared to her

Aw that's so sweet.
Yaeger was always great with the kids, one day Ashley fell off her bike and he stood right over her until we got there.
He and our other (older) GSD were the first we'd owned as adults, hubby's family had some while he was growing up, but then and there I fell in love with the breed and I doubt we'll ever be without at least one in our home

I socialized the snot out of my dogs, and teach kids that though their experience with my dogs is wonderful, dogs generally don't want them in their face. When I see strange kids coming, I make them stop and ask to pet first. Generally, I treat every encounter with prudent caution, but confidence that good behavior will ensue. Not all dogs obviously are equal, nor are the children. I encourage other dog owners to do the same whenever I can. Some take heed, some don't. You do all you can for all you can, and hope for the best.

One time my female growled at my grandson. My wife wanted me to discipline her for that, but I felt she had spoken a protest to him, he took the cue and backed off, and there was no need. She got up once he did back off and left. She didn't feel like being mauled, said so, which got him off her and then she moved away. He learned a good lesson, she behaved like she felt she needed to. The discussion afterwards was minutes away, and a correction made no sense to me that far from the incident. It made the two closer. They get along famously.



Hugo is very loving with children, he had even more socialization as a pup. But my
"prudent caution" and "confidence" is the same no matter which dog or kid is involved. It's a habit, one that has given good results.





Maybe I did too much socialization for Hugo to be tough on the protection field, but if I error-ed on the side of safety, so be it. Maybe he's just a loverboy. In either case, the kids can play in Papa's yard with the dogs out there, and they are safe.

Socializing Yukon around kids was always a big concern of mine. I don't have kids, and I'm not the type to go out of my way to find kids for Yukon to play and hang around with.

So while Yukon was young I would accept any invitation for dinner parties, family get together, birthdays etc.. where I knew kids would be running around playing. I would ask if I could bring Yukon along, him being a cute pup, he was very kindly welcomed. Unfortunately these invitations only lasted for less than a year, as I ended up moving too far away to continue.

Out on walks if a child approaches us asking to pet Yukon I would say "Sure" and then instruct him/her how to properly approach a dog. Surprisingly most of the kids in this town are very well educated about dogs. Often times these youngsters are telling me how great German Shepherds are. Bless!

I would say Yukon is 40-50% trustworthy around young kids. He will stand quiet and calm while being stroked by a child, but I would not trust him when it comes to food and kids or overly excited kids. He does tend to see fast running, screaming children as possible playmates.

I think the memory of being exposed to children as a puppy is still there for Yukon it's just buried, and as I mentioned above, I don't have the nerve/motivation to seek out young children to re-surface that memory and training.

So do you think it's an unreasonable expectation for parents to want to leave their kids and dogs together unsupervised?

I have found that most people want to do this? It seems anyway?

When Molly was a puppy (biting and generally being a terror) I would not leave stepson alone with him. When she was trustworthy (maybe 1!!!) then I felt comfortable. He is never allowed to be alone with her off property though, never holds onto her lead. Only because she is STRONG and nobody but me handles my dog.

With Cooper as he is not especially mouthy and now stepson is 10 1/2, I let them be but have to constantly remind him that no teeth are to touch skin - shove a toy in there quick!

But yesterday I was 'off duty' for an hour or so while Molly and I had some alone time on the bed (cuddles) and Brad and ss were in charge of Cooper - accident on the floor! The only one of the day

Thankfully as SS was here for holidays when we first brought Molly home she is used to kids and is great with them. Am hoping Cooper will be the same and there were two girls at the breeders.

I see that most of the folks around here with kids have that expectation, and do leave kids and dogs together.

But these are kids, not toddlers, and I think there is a distinction. Most of the kids around here that were raised around dogs seem to have the right relationship with the dogs, I've seen no problems. The problem however comes when there are kids there that haven't been raised around dogs, and also with toddlers that haven't yet been taught how to behave around dogs.

Young kids, that like to walk up to a dog, pet the dog, then turn on a dime and take off at high speed, or those that are in the face of the dogs, etc. very dangerous to leave them alone with many dogs!

We lucked out when we adopted Sean, i.e. he loves kids which made us think he must have been raised around them but he loves people in general. From the time our kids were young we always taught them how to treat an animal and supervised whenever they had friends over. Fortunately we never had a problem, in fact, Sean usually wanted to be wherever the kids were playing. I guess he was their nursemaid.

I don't have kids, or child relatives. I used to take Brennan as a pup to the edge of the drive way where the neighbourhood kids came, asked to pat her and then encouraged them to greet her. I would ask the kids to give her enough space so she didn't feel crowded, and would show the kids how to present her with a treat in an open palm. I also would walk her down past the local school at varying times, and into my Mums school- rewarding for calmness. I always encourage kids to ask for permission- that is my major rule- if they don't ask permission, they don't pat my dog. I do actively seek ways to continually socialise her to children.

I will always supervise Brennan with children- she's not a nasty dog, but she is excitable, and when she gets too excited she is at risk of jumping and could easily hurt a child in her excited state. That said, recently my neighbours kid jumped over my fence to retrieve a frisbee that had landed in my yard and Brennan had played with- although she clearly didn't mind ( I had no idea he had done it and I was inside at the time), I still went and had words to his Mum and told her what had happened and expressed how dangerous it was.