young children

[rford2222]

We are expecting twin children & our yorkie is 1 1/2 yrs old. She gets very scared around young children hovering over here, and if my wife or I hold her or grab her she snarls and tries to go after the child. She also has gone after other dogs when we hold her, but as soon as we put her off the leash she is timid to other dogs. My concern is she may nip one of the children.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[MeganS]

welcome to YT!! i would reccomend getting her used to them ASAP!! if you have any kids in your family like neices or nephews or maybe some neighborhood kids who you know and trust. little by little have them go around her. keep her busy while they are around. give her treats and give her a lot of praise whenever she is good. just make sure you don't let the kids get close enough for her to reach and don't start out with having them pet her just work your way up. good luck i hope this helps!!!!!!

[rford2222]

there is no young children in our family unforunately for her to get used to. She is fine but when young children seem to hover over her she cowers, just like she does to larger dogs. If I am holding her she snaps at young children & dogs.

[Marie]

Welcome to YT and Congratulations on the twins. I also think you should start working with her little by little to get her use being around kids.I agreed with Megan. I have 2 kids, 12 yr old boy and 4 yr old daugther. I really haven't had any problems with Gucci and my kids. Good luck and please keep us posted.

[StewiesMom]

Hello. Welcome to Yorkie Talk. My brother just had a newborn baby boy (he's 1 week today). I can give you an example of what he did to get his 3 year old big boy ready for the baby.

First, he let the dog spend a lot of time in the baby's room beffore it was even born.

We watched the dog while they went into the hospital to have the baby. I went to visit the baby and brought back one of his "dirty" blankets and outfits that had been worn. I let the dog smell it and gave him treats and praised him while he was sniffing it. Then, I put the items in his bed so he could sleep near the baby's scent.

The Shar Pei had never really been around small children except for my niece who is 12 now. I would try doing those things once the baby comes. Now, the dog sleeps by the baby's door and runs into his room to check on him whenever he hears baby Jack make a peep.

I hope I helped a little. Congratuations on the twins. I am sure with a little patience on everyone's part, your Yorkie will come around and be OK.

[chloeandj]

I had a maltese that was never around children. She was about 7 when I had my first child. Boy did she go through some jealousy issues and she did stuff to me! But no concerns really came up with my son until he was crawling. We had to watch them together so he wouldn't pull her hair or anything, but it didn't take long before she realized kids are food dropping machines and she warmed up to him. She also learned to get on the couch or go lay on my bed when she didn't want to be around him. My advice is never trust them together. By the time they are crawling around hopefully she will be used to their presence by then. THey will learn from from eachother. My children both grew up learning how to pet and treat small dogs. My maltese that I have now loves children but does get nervous when a lot of kids hover around her. Whenever we go to the park, we always have all these kids running up to her. I tell them that she prefers if you sit down and let her come to you. This works like a charm as she feels less threatened if they come down to her level. Your yorkie needs some good experiences with some kind, gentle kids that she won't feel threatened by.
Congratulations on your twins! That's very exciting!

[rford2222]

thanks for all suggestions, i really appreciate all them.
My concern is she is fine with older people, when she is on the leash with me or my wife she gets much braver. For example, my mother has a **** zu, the play fine off the leash, once on the leash or i hold her she gets aggresive. Would using a water bottle at this time help? I saw some people recommend that as a training technique. Any other suggestions.

[Stitches29]

Originally Posted by rford2222

We are expecting twin children & our yorkie is 1 1/2 yrs old. She gets very scared around young children hovering over here, and if my wife or I hold her or grab her she snarls and tries to go after the child. She also has gone after other dogs when we hold her, but as soon as we put her off the leash she is timid to other dogs. My concern is she may nip one of the children.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

You shouldn't have any problems, if you allow her to be a part of the babies lives. If you push her away, then the jealousy will for sure show. You might say that you have 3 children now.

[rford2222]

we want her included in every aspect, but her behavior when she is around young children makes us little nervous.

[chloeandj]

Yes, spray her and correct her with a little snap on the leash and a loud no. She shouldn't be allowed to be aggressive to another dog or person. Maybe since she is on the leash when she does it, she is being possessive of you? You should nip that in the bud right now, before those babies comes. Give her plenty of opportunity to be aggressive and correct her. Either with the water gun or a can with pennies. Does she sleep in your bed at night? Those babies might be in your bed quite a lot in the beginning. You may want to have her start sleeping in a crate at night as well if she doesn't already. Good luck to you. You have valid concerns to worry about. She just needs some training. Very important for her to know you are the boss.

[rford2222]

we are teaching her the drop it command at the moment, so when she has something she shouldnt she drops it, she drops toys she is allowed fine, she also knows to leave things once she drops it. Things she shouldnt we are still working on. Does anyone recommend the water bottle or pennies in a can if the "drop it" command doesnt work. Does using pennies in a can or loud noises make yorkies afraid of loud noises like thunder

[chloeandj]

All of my little ones seem to do ok with thunder and I have used the can on all of them. Tinkerbell actually barks back at it, but it works great on my other dogs. I prefer the squirt bottle because it is less irritating to me. I use it even if one of them doesn't come when called from outside. HA! HA! I squirt them and off they come running. It's just letting her know if she doesn't do what you ask, something uncomfortable happens. Also, a few years ago, before I had my current dogs, we had an older maltese and a lab/rottweiler mix puppy. We were having some problems with the lab and decided to sign up for dog training classes. The trainer offered a free home session to help you with your specific dog problems. That was the best money ever spent. Not only did he help with the puppy but he whipped my spoiled rotton, little maltese into shape too. Back then I knew nothing about training a dog or how to teach them anything. With just one session with that trainer at our home, our dogs turned into well behaved dogs because we learned what to do when they did something we didn't like and we also learned quite a lot about how dogs think. Might be something you could do, if you were up to it. I would never have guessed that the dog that would have benefited the most from that session was my older dog.

[rford2222]

thank you so much for all the info, when u use the squirt bottle do use a specific setting? My yorkie loves going in our sprinkler thats why i am asking

[chloeandj]

LOl! My yorkie does too.

Put it on stream. If nothing else it will get her attention long enough for you to correct her. If you use a can, use a slimfast one since it is a thicker metal, which makes it louder.

[yorkipower]

Originally Posted by rford2222

We are expecting twin children & our yorkie is 1 1/2 yrs old. She gets very scared around young children hovering over here, and if my wife or I hold her or grab her she snarls and tries to go after the child. She also has gone after other dogs when we hold her, but as soon as we put her off the leash she is timid to other dogs. My concern is she may nip one of the children.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Congrats on the twins!

This is a topic near and dear to my heart - having been involved with Yorkie rescue for the past 10 years and the kids/yorkie issue being a very common theme.

Its VERY common for young couples to get their first "baby" - a canine -before starting a family and then, voila, they are suddenly faced with the prospect
that the two legged kids are on the way and what to do with the tiny dog who is not used to being around kids?

Let me first say this: if given an option, I generally DO NOT recommend Yorkies with small children and advise parents of kids clamoring for a Yorkie to hold off until their children are mentally and emotionally mature enough to understand that this small dog is not a play thing and has feeling and can get hurt (or be the cause of hurt!). Usually, that's at least around 8 years old - but it varies - of course -child to child. Some Yorkies (and it sounds like yours falls in to this category) are very "terrier" in temperament, they may have a low bite threshold - meaning that they are more prone to bite than other, cooler dogs and a dominant personality (remember the breed you have is a toy TERRIER - Yorkies were originally bred to hunt rodents almost as big as they were - that means they had to bite to kill and be willing to fight). In addition, many act tuff to hide their insecurity about being so small (my own Bun man has a reputation of bullying big dogs because he is actually afraid of them but figures if he puts on a good show -the big dogs will back down). Alternatively, there are meek and fragile Yorkies. My Penny can fall into this category. Penny is a total sweetheart who has never snarled, outside of playing, in her life. But she is only four pounds and has matchsticks for Bones. If she were dropped, it could easily mean her life. Although nether of my dogs would intentionally harm a kid (without some provocation - I'll get to that in a minute), I NEVER leave either unsupervised around children of ANY age. Now - that side note I just made:

Here goes:

I strongly recommend reading some of Jean Donaldson's books because she does a better job of this than I can but . . . in a nutshell . . there is no such thing as a dog who does not bite. I know there are going to be people reading this and saying "that's silly, my dog has never shown the least bit of aggression to anybody! She's nuts!" Well, you might be right about the nuts part but not the bite part. Expecting a dog to never bite is like expecting a person to never throw a punch. Many of us have never been in a physical altercation with another person - but that does not mean we are not CAPABLE of it. Dogs, just like people, have different "trigger" points. There are people who fly off the handle at the smallest provocation as there are dogs. But just because a person or dog is even tempered, doesn’t' mean that he or she doesn’t' have his or her boiling point as well. There's also another thing to consider – how the dog bites: does he snarl or growl first (that's actually good - that means the dog is patient, and willing to give a warning "this is not good. Stop it or else!") and how hard does the dog bite? Has he broken skin before (bad – he doesn’t give a warning bites. Mother dogs may nip their puppies, but that’s like a “Spank” – stop misbehaving – but seldom, if ever, does that nip actually break skin. Puppies should learn at a very early age the strength of their jaws and learn to modulate the tension in a bite. Unfortunately, some dogs do not).This last point is ESPECIALLY important for a dog that will be living with children. What might not be a serious bite for an adult could mean terrible scaring for a child.

Reading your post over again, it really does sound like your dog is fear aggressive but I will hold off on my "take" because a trained eye should really see your dog and make an analysis then and there. Keeping a dog who is fear aggressive with very young children is not impossible (and I applaud you for trying rather than abandoning your dog which is the sad story all too often) but it will take a lot of time and dedication and VIGILANCE on your parts. I see a lot of people here have recommended a spray bottel with water. Please keep in mind that if your dog is biting because she scared, squirting her with water may only make the problem even worse because now you are creating a negative association attached to the thing that is causing the fear:
Dogs says "oh oh - what are those things running around and making all that noise! Oh my! I better snarl and bark to see if I can make them go away!" Snarl, bark. Mom comes over with water bottel, squirt squirt.
Doy says "Oh no! I was right! How awful! These things that run around bring mom over with the squirt bottel!"
- operant conditioning trainers would say - make the dog associate the kids with POSTIVE experiences, treats, huggies, time and attention. So that the dog no longer FEARS them and has no reason to become aggressive. But since I'm guessing at what is causing your dog to show aggression - again, have a more experienced person obersve your dog and come to an assessment herself.

CHECK LIST

Before the children come:

1) Consult with a dog behaviorist, or at least, a dog trainer
2) Make desensitizing your dog to children a foremost priority. Preferably under the watchful eye of your trainer, recruit OLDER children in the neighborhood to help you get your dog used to their movements and actions. Be sure you get the kid's parent's permission first and explain to them why you are doing this. And of course, do not push it – never put dog or child in an uncomfortable position. If the dogs seems even the least bit tense, back off to the point where the dog was comfortable and stay at that point until he relaxes. (I’ve posted before about desensitizing but again, check out Jean Donalson. Her newest book, “Fight!” deals with dog to dog aggression, but she discusses how to deal with fear aggression in depth – so its well worth the read).
3) Set up a "quite area" for your dog - away from where the children will be kept. If your dog is not crate trained, get her used to being a crate and let her know that this is her "Safe place" and not a punishment. She will need a place where she can be away from the kids and not threatened.
4)Also, one other important point here - your dog is used to being your one and only. Dogs can be jealous of children! When the kids come, you need to schedule time in your day for you and dog alone. Let your dog know that she is not being replaced. This will also make the transition easier. If you don’t have this kind of quite/play time already scheduled for your dog, start incorporating it into your day now. Dogs like routine and many can get stressed when their routine is disrupted. The more you keep things “normal” for your dog, the easier this transition is going to be.

Just some dos and don’ts.

DO pay extra special attention to your dog when the children come but
DON’t let any sign of aggression hence forth go unchecked. If your dog snarls as your husband, make him the “dog trainer” for the moment and have him do obedience work with your dog.
DON’t leave your dog alone with the children – not for a long long time
DO get a dog trainer or, preferably a dog behaviorist, and begin working on quelling your dogs aggressive tendencies immediately before the kids come.

Please let me know how your doing. I will help out anyway I can. Best of luck.