When will our dog be able to be unsupervised with our cats and what videos do you recommend that explain how to introduce a baby to our dog?

Hello,

I have a 70-75 pound Alaskan Malamute that is 2 years old and have 2 cats that lived in the house prior to my dog living here. Ever since she (my dog) was a puppy, I followed your techniques with training her to get along with the cats. At this time, she is wonderful with the cats! She seems to even be protective over them and does NOT chase them, in fact she will quickly look the other way if she accidently catches a glance of my 15 year old cat (my 15 year old cat is the boss of all the animals). There has been no fighting and truly peace between the cats and dog; the cats fight with each other, but never with the dog.

I still keep the dog separated from the cats when my husband and I are not around (we use a tall baby gate with a lockable cat door in it). My question, is there ever a time in our dog's life where we can leave them in the same common area? I know that every dog/cat situation is different, but I am being super cautious and other than at night they do not wonder together without our supervision. She is trained to stay in our kitchen and only leaves the kitchen when we give her the command, so at night the cats sleep with us and the dog sleeps in the kitchen (I'm amazed that we were actually able to train her to stay in the kitchen, as she's my first dog). She'll even be within feet of the cats when they eat and does NOT go near their food. If anything, I actually have the opposite problem where my one cat will eat my dog's food and my dog will openly share with him with no ill feelings! However, I quickly scold the cat for doing that and remove him from the dog's food area as this is a bad habit that my cat has.

Thank you for all of the advice and training techniques with the cats, it really worked! Overall, our dog is very easy going and really accepts our cats as part of her pack. I was very strict with my training, so I believe that things paid off! Now, if I can only get my dog to protect me! It just does not seem to be in our dog's nature to want to do anything other than lick strangers!

Also, we are expecting our first child in a couple of weeks and was wondering if you have any DVDs or places within your website with advice for a new baby? She loves babies and kids, but I wanted to work with her in the correct manner. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong place or missed it on the website, but I couldn't find a DVD with baby specific baby information in it.

Regards,
Terri