I have a 5month old lab/boxer mix female puppy named Luna. I also have a 3 year old daughter. My puppy was sleeping on the recliner and my daughter was watching cartoons standing up.. while I was sitting 3ft. away from both of them. My daughter backed up to the recliner and either tried hugging or just sitting w/Luna and Luna growled and bit her right on the cheek of her face! It happened so fast. I immediately ran over to make sure my daughter was ok and Luna hid and cowered before I even raised my voice to her. She knew she did wrong. After making sure my daughter was ok I scolded Luna and marched her to her crate. Thankfully the bite only left welts that lasted a couple hours...no broken skin.

I am sooo paranoid now w/the puppy and my daughter. I have read a LOT of information on this website since this happened... but still cannot find a direct answer to my concerns.I have read a lot about separating the puppy and the child 100% of the time... that is nearly impossible in my mind, I may as well give the dog a better home if that were to be the case. Luna is a very submissive dog so I am guessing this could be a sign of fear aggression??? Or was it just a one time thing? I am not sure if my daughter just startled her or hurt her by leaning on her or both?? I am looking for suggestions and would greatly appreciate any input you have. THANK YOU!

Your daughter's safety should be your #1 concern. If your not experienced enough (doesn't sound like it) you should get rid of the dog.
You may get a number of other folks giving different advice. Think about your daughter. It's not worth the risk.
There are many, many more dogs out there that would be a much better match for you and your daughter.

Your first order of business is to teach your little girl not to touch sleeping dogs. This is just as dangerous as touching a hot stove and should be started immediately. In fact, children this young should always need to ask permission before interacting with animals even when it's their own. (I am a mom of 3 ages 4-9 and we have always had dogs, so I know that it is do-able)
There is going to have to be supervised play periods with ALL of your attention on the interactions between dog and girl so you can take the opportunities to redirrect the puppy (who is just a baby itself) and teach your little girl the proper things to do and not to do. This is the only time they should be together. There will also need to be seperation (yes, a lot of it) until A. The puppy is well trained and is past it's impulsive stages and B. Your little girl is old enough to understand and follow all of the rules. This can be done with baby gates, using nap time and her bed time to your advantage as training time for puppy or just simply letting your daughter know that right now puppy is off limits and keeping puppy tethered to you.
There is no reason that pup has to be out of a crate if it is sleeping, so use those sleep times as a break.
If you view separation as a "bad" thing, it isn't. It is necessary for a safe environment for your daughter AND the puppy.
I don't know how long it took for you to scold Luna, but you may want to think about that and whether or not she made the correlation between the bite and the "correction" At this stage, you have to be close enough to the dog that the correction can be immediate and IMO, severe for an aggressive bite.

I'm sorry this has happened to your daughter; this is a situation I am hoping doesn't occur in my own family at the moment...

Our first BB pup was a shark compared to our soft and tolerant Pointers, we were totally unprepared for a pup with such challenging and fearless confidence, she was very mouthy, and we had never seen that sort of bratish behavior in a PUP before, my kids were adults, so any of their freinds that came to the house were just told to ignore her, and not to engage her in any sort of 'play'.

I don't know if there are any breed 'specific' dogs that are considered unsuitable for families with very young children, though I imagine it is more a case of being proactive before the pup is even brought home, people who are experienced with guardian and protection breeds will be prepared for managing the home environment.

I hope you get some advice from such people here so that you can deal with the situation before you have to let the dog go.

Good luck.

Ed deals with this issue quite a bit in his articles and videos. Based on his teachings, part of this issue is pack structure; the dog does not recognize the child as being of a higher rank. Access to furniture is one of the factors fueling this, as a dog with access to furniture, and especially one who is positioning for rank, is resource guarding.
Separation 100% of the time is not an accurate quote; the advice is no unsupervised interaction, and no dog should ever have unlimited access to small children. As much as you would like to think being in the same room with the child and dog is supervised interaction, it is not. If everyone is hanging out in the living room doing their own thing, such as watching tv while the dog sleeps on the chair and the child is wandering around, this is not a controlled situation.
A five month old puppy cannot have "earned" free access to the house yet. This dog should be in the crate at all times unless directly interacting with the pack leader. If you want to keep this dog, you need to implement Leerburg's groundwork program, including the pack structure video.

CONNIE; please help with the links!

Ms. Whitehead,

Luna off the recliner, couch, bed, etc. No furniture. The dog lives in a person world and is not entitled to the same freedoms a person of any age has. Everything the dog has is yours, and everything the dog receives is from you.

Your reaction was a training moment for the dog. It got it that you valued your daughter much more than you valued it.

Vigilance should not be confused with paranoia, though a friend once opined he would rather be paranoid than surprised.

The sky hasn't fallen. The dog probably doesn't remember the bite thing, and if you didn't go to the emergency room, it was a puppy thing, and puppies do puppy things.

So, you got a lesson in dogs and people. You don't have to be a tyrant to set rules and boundaries, and your daughter at three years of age needs to be 'trained' in those rules and boundaries too.

It is a wonderful thing to see a puppy and child grow together but the puppy has to understand its role in the pack, and that does not require harsh corrections or whatever. Two puppies got into a little territorial thing, and that is not to trivialize the circumstance.

At three years of age, your daughter has to be taught how to work with a dog, and that means no hitting, or yelling, or whatever. Put another way, your daughter 'training' the dog would be like the blind leading the blind.

Manage the interaction without fear but with leadership. Train the puppy to take and give up things freely. Train the puppy to not be food protective or toy protective or space protective but remember the puppy is only five months old.

You have two children about the same age and you have to lead them both.

You had a puppy moment. Learn from it and without hysteria or paranoia, work with both of your children. But don't assume.

Thank you for your response. I will def. take your advise about the puppy not being allowed on furniture, it makes sense. I also agree w/you that I have two children that need trained. Since this happened I have been working w/my daughter and stressing how important it is to respect a dogs space and doing my best to never leave them unattended together,( however this episode happened when I was right in the room). Thanks again!

Do you know about tethering the puppy to you (never to a stationary object)?

I agree that you now know you must tighten up the rules: the puppy has no furniture access unless and until invited (with an adult); the puppy is not loose in the house yet (and here's where tethering, crating, and gates come in), the child is taught about dogs, etc.

The experienced folks have really covered it so well that I really just wanted to put in my hugely enthusiastic tethering plug for the times when the puppy is not leashed or crated or otherwise safe.



ETA: Oops. Amy mentioned it. Well, two votes now!


Edited by Connie Sutherland (03/22/2012 09:57 AM)
Edit reason: eta

 Quote: Jenny Whitehead

Thank you for your response. I will def. take your advise about the puppy not being allowed on furniture, it makes sense. I also agree w/you that I have two children that need trained. Since this happened I have been working w/my daughter and stressing how important it is to respect a dogs space and doing my best to never leave them unattended together,( however this episode happened when I was right in the room). Thanks again!

This last part is the not-quite-enough part, if you will allow mw to point it out. "Do my best" must be "I will never."

The puppy (at this stage, and for some time to come) just isn't loose near the little kids.

Disney, TV, photos on FB notwithstanding, this is not fear-mongering or overreaction. As someone else here pointed out on another near-miss recent thread, careful vigilance will not make having a puppy any less fulfilling, and it WILL protect the children (and the puppy!).

Jenny Whitehead. My sister had a good friend of the same name. Not you, is it?