Every child should have a pet. Not only are pets nice companions for children, having to care for a pet teaches a child responsibility.
If you’re a parent, though, it can be a challenge, especially if the pet you get for your children is the number one favorite, a dog. You could get gold fish or a hamster, which are also nice but neither is as interactive and just plain fun to be around as a dog. You’ll notice I don’t mention a cat as a pet. If you’re a cat person, I guess it’s okay, but being allergic to cat hair, I avoid them like the plague. Wish I could say the same about cats. Whenever I’m in the same room with one, and a few of my friends own cats, they seem to always come straight to me. It’s like they sense my allergy and are deliberately tormenting me.
But, that’s not what I want to talk about today.
Today’s topic is training. Training your new dog, of course, but also training your children. Never thought of that, did you? Well, before you run out and spend several hundred dollars for a dog—and even adopting rescue dogs from a shelter can cost you—consider what kind of training program you’ll have; for your children as well as the dog.
You see, if your little ones haven’t had the experience of a pet, they will be as jumpy and excited when you bring the dog home as most dogs will be when you first bring them home. You can mitigate some of that by getting an older, larger breed of dog. They seem to be less excitable than the small ones. They’re quieter too.
You’ll have to start training your new dog right away. This means establishing the relationship between it and you, with you the pack leader, no-go areas of your house—you might not want it to get into the habit of drinking from the toilet, for example—feeding, potty, and exercise schedules should head the list. Then there are things like teaching it to ‘sit,’, ‘heel,’ and ‘stay.’ You should have a word or hand gesture to signal ‘no,’ for the things you don’t want it to do, such as the habit of large dogs sometimes have of planting their forepaws on your chest and staring you in the eye. That’s a definite no-no for me.
That training takes time and patience, but it’s a snap compared to training your children.
You have to train them to be patient and to remain calm around the dog. It doesn’t learn to ‘sit’ the first time you tell it, and just because it sits when you say doesn’t mean that training is over. It will look at you with its big sad eyes when you’re eating an ice cream cone, but this does not mean that you should give it ice cream. Nor should you give it food from your plate at meal times, and never, ever let it eat from your plate. These are not just arbitrary, made-up rules. As a parent who has had to introduce my children to dogs, I’ve seen it all.
Another thing that’s hard to teach children is that it’s not cruel of you to establish your dominance over the animal. This is how dogs operate in packs, and if your relationship with the dog is to be effective you must make it known that it is the junior member of the pack, especially important if you have smaller children and a big dog who might view them as smaller, weaker pack members. I once watched an eight-year-old trying to get a dog that was lying down to get up. Only a few pounds heavier than the dog and not much taller, the poor kid finally gave up and lay down beside the dog. Now, which of those two do you think was dominant in that incident? Answer: it was not the boy.
Dogs will patiently endure training sessions until what you’re trying to teach them becomes ingrained and, barring an emergency will act appropriately once trained. I wish I could say the same about children. They argue, don’t listen, forget, and argue some more. At a certain age they think they already know everything and resist changes in their behavior. I’ve found that I can teach a dog two new tricks before teaching a child one, and the dog’s performance will always be superior.
If you have neither dog nor child yet, you might want to get a dog first. Training it will be less stressful and will give you some practice for training your child when it comes along. Oh, and the dog can help you train the child. If you already have children and you’ve decided to get a dog, buckle your safety belt because you’re in for a rough ride. – NWI
