Train Your Children - Before You Get A Dog

Often, a dog bite could have been avoided. This is not to say that dogs who attack people and children are always right, and there are some dogs who just shouldn't be around other dogs or humans. But the occasional nip or bite, especially when there are children involved, is often a dog's reaction to something the child has done. Usually a reaction to being hurt, teased or pestered, your children need to realise that dogs cannot speak, shout or otherwise make their pain or misery known. Teach your children to respect their pets.

Puppies may be cute, fluffy and playful, but they are not stuffed toys. They should not be smothered, hugged tightly, pinched, pulled or tugged on. Explain to your children that they feel pain just the same way we do. If being pinched hurts us, it will hurt the dog too.

Young children should not be allowed to pick dogs up and carry them around. Firstly, they tend to pick pets up by their front legs, which can injure the dog. They don't carry them properly, and tend to drop them rather quickly too. A dog that is being hurt is going to react in the only way they can - with a nip. Teach your children not to pull dogs round their neck either - choking the dog is not likely to make him a friend.

Teach your children how to pet the dog, where not to touch or poke fingers - eyes, ears, in between pads etc. Buy a book about the breed of dog you are getting, and learn with your children how to read the dog's body language. The position of a dog's ears and tail can tell you a lot about how the dog is feeling and is likely to react. Make sure your children know that a growl is a warning - and if they don't stop what they're doing, they're likely to get bitten.

Teasing is a big problem. It makes for irritable, frustrated dogs, and is likely to end in tears when the dog tries to grab whatever it is being teased with and accidentally grabs a little hand at the same time. I found the best cure for this was to take one of the toys my daughter was playing with, and tease her with it - and then explain that the frustration and anger she was feeling, was exactly how the dogs would feel if she did the same thing to them. Often using examples with their toys helps to illustrate the dog's feelings in the same situation.

You will also need to teach your children to leave the dog alone when it is eating and sleeping. Both my children got nipped approaching a sleeping dog too quickly - the dog gets a fright and most often reacts with an open mouth - they don't even have to be biting to inflict damage with their teeth, especially puppies. Not all dogs are protective of their food or toys, but it will take time to teach the dogs to drop a toy or bone when told to, and until that time, it is best not to let small children try to take anything out of a dog's mouth.

Explain to your children that too much screaming and high-pitched laughter is likely to scare a new puppy, especially when you first bring it home - dogs interpret sounds differently to the way we do, so ask them to try and keep the volume down for a little while until the new puppy gets used to them.

Involve your children in caring for the dog, feeding it, grooming it and cleaning up after it. Just be careful when training the dog - my daughter tried her level best to ruin all our efforts with different commands that made more sense to her, until eventually we had to ban her from training sessions. Don't let children smack, hit or kick dogs - the dogs may retaliate one day and the consequences could be awful. Disciplining the dogs, just like disciplining the children, must be up to the adults in the house. You wouldn't let your eldest child discipline a younger sibling, so don't do it with the dogs either.

Having pets gives children companionship, hours of play and pleasure, but perhaps more importantly, a sense of responsibility and of how to care for another living creature with respect and understanding.