Preparing Nala (the Dog) for Sisterhood

You've probably heard me mention our dog, Nala... for whom I have an incredible, enormous, borderline obsessive amount of love. For nearly seven years, she has been our baby, our little shining light. I could not love a dog more than I adore this pup.

However, there are some Nala idiosyncrasies that have me in a bit of a worrying state with the impending arrival of her little brother or sister. I've explained some of those "issues" before, here.

Most relevant to my recent state of affairs, Nala is unfamiliar and uncomfortable with children.

Ghasp!! I know, sort of a big deal when we're having a child of our own.

When kids see a big fluffy yellow lab (she's part shepard but looks mostly lab), they run right for her, wide armed, wide grinned and screaming some sort of garble about "doggie pet tail pull ride moosh love cuddle yay". It reminds me of Elmyra from Tiny Toons. "I'm gonna hug you and kiss you and love you forever and ever and ever."

This type of approach does not bode well with Nala (I can't imagine why). She does not like to be approached by anyone or anything, no matter how small, cute, and harmless they may be so when she sees a child running at her mumbling not one word in her vocabulary (which is quite extensive), she panics. And by panic I mean she starts barking and growling and looking pretty vicious. For older kids, this is enough to scare them away. But for toddlers, it generally makes them laugh and run faster TOWARDS her... in which instance the parents scoop them up... which sends the child into a tantrum because they don't understand why they cannot pet the doggie.

Unfortunately, there is not much that we have been able to do to further socialize her with children because honestly, we can't really ask our friends and family to put their children in harm's way for the sake of Nala's social anxiety. So the problem has never been formally addressed.

But - internets, don't send an SOS to Cesar Millan just yet (although, Cesar, if you happen to be in the RI area, we could really use your help!!!). I have faith that the hub and I can prepare her for what's to come, on our own.

One advantage we have working for us... she IS accepting of infants. She's been exposed to quite a few bambinos recently and she really has no issue with the little bundles of joy. Nor does she mind when Kevin or I HOLD the baby and talk all googly woogly (in the voice we frequently speak to her). Infants don't really move all that much so Nala could care less. I am hopeful that Nala adjusts to our child, her new sibling, in its newborn state and begins to consider this baby as a member of our pack before it is mobile (and able to torture her).

We've read a ton of advice and have watched our fair share of Dog Whisperer episodes to educate ourselves on the proper techniques to introduce a dog to a new member of the family. And we've begun instituing some of these practices so that come July, it is not all such a shock to Nala. We're taking her training very seriously.

The first order of business is taming her excitability when guests visit. Evidently, we're going to have a lot of people stopping by once Baby arrives and the last thing we want to be concerned with are Nala's greetings. Arrivals are generally quite an affair for Nala, especially when its her BFFs (our parents and close friends) at the door because they are always equally excited to see each other and this smotherly love fest carries on for the first five minutes. Nala kisses them to death and they proceed to schmoopy talk and pet the crap out of her and then its right to the cookie jar for a "c-o-o-k-i-e" because... well, for no good reason other than people like to spoil dogs. Well, NO MAS. Our family and friends have been instructed that they are not to even greet Nala when they come in and she cannot be pet or paid attention to until she has calmed down. So far, its working well and she has responded excellently.

Our next practice is to introduce the crying baby doll into our home. A friend of ours happens to have a dollie that cries (that they used to prepare their socially anxious dog for their baby) that they are loaning us (chances are, with a REAL crying baby at home, they won't want the dollie back) to "play with". In a couple of weeks we're going to conduct some exercises where we will handle and speak to this doll as if it is our own child. We're hoping that, in addition to us seeming like freaks, Nala grows accustomed to us paying attention to another bundle of joy.

The final exercise is to prohibit Nala from being in the baby's room. We saw this done by Cesar (as in the Dog Whisperer) and it makes a lot of sense. He says that it is important to let the dog know that the baby has a space and that excitability is not acceptable within this space. And, we're not going to simply close the door to keep her out of the room, but through training we're going to create a boundary that she cannot cross.

Eventually, we're hopeful that Nala will adopt the baby as one of us and she will probably end up being incredibly protective of him or her.