Dogs & Kids: Preparing for a Safe and Happy Home

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

Grainger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Grainger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

I don't know about you, but I get pretty excited when football season rolls around. That's why I always make a stop at Total Wine& More before kickoff. Whether it's craft bourbon, cold beer, or ready-to-drink cocktails, it's easy to build a lineup that keeps everyone happy. And when I'm getting everything ready for game day, it's nice knowing I'm getting the lowest prices. Make Total Wine and More part of your game day tradition. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, he's friendly! My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, just a dog training enthusiast. But of course, as always, joined by the expert that is Max O'Neill the Down Under Dog Trainer, but also, Max, you've brought a friend. Oh, friend. Dog friend.

Love the Between Us reference. Yeah, so we've got Seb here today. Seb works for us at Down Under Dog Trainer and has Canines on Cue on the Gold Coast. We're going to do an episode where we hear a bit more about Seb's story, but also today we wanted to bring Seb in because Seb has just become a dad. Congrats, Seb.

Hello. Congratulations, mate. Welcome.

Very exciting.

Welcome to the fold.

And today we wanted to do an episode on kids, babies, and pregnancy because all 3 of us are kind of in a different boat. We've got Jack, who's had kids for a while. Seb, who's just had one, and me, who's got one on the way. So we've got 3 different things from each of us today we're going to give you just on everything kids, babies, pregnancy, and dogs.

Yeah, because I mean, it doesn't matter how much you talk about it. I still see constantly videos on social media where people are laughing and thinking it's cute, where you've got kids hanging off dogs' ears, slapping dogs around, or, you know, lying on top of a dog. And you're just like, you hold your head going, it's just a recipe for disaster.

Just a brand new baby just put into the face of a dog.

Yes. Smell this. Just forcing them to just enjoy it. And, you know, a lot of people, I think there's a lot of people that just don't understand. They're like, my dog's beautiful. It's a Labrador. It'll never hurt a fly, blah, blah, blah. It's not like a, you bad person, shake our finger, wag, wag, wag. It's more of a, hey, here's some, here's some information as to why you shouldn't probably let your kid or you shouldn't put a kid in a dog's face, etc.

Yeah, exactly. Like for me, like you can be the most friendliest, human-friendly, dog-friendly dog, but like that dog doesn't know that that baby is a human. It's just a small, wiggly, weird thing. And like it could be a toy, it could be anything. So if you just put that into the You're like, all right, just figure this out. Like, what is this? You know?

And that's why we wanted to do today's episode, because especially for us, Seb and I recently, I know like we had a lot of conversations is during both of our wives' pregnancy. We're like, dude, there's like zero good resources out there. I know both of us struggled to find stuff. So we've been putting stuff out on our respective social channels. But today each of us is going to give you our 3 top tips around kids, babies, and pregnancy. So hopefully you guys can walk away with some really handy things to go, oh damn. Yeah, I should be doing that or need to do more of that.

Let's start with the life cycle begins. Max, we'll start with you from the very beginning. People preparing for a baby to come into the house where they've already got a dog there.

My top 3 tips is number 1, we don't want you to live in a dog-centric universe. Number 2, we want your dog getting used to doing obedience and listening to you while the baby is a part of the picture. And number 3 is we're going to be teaching the dogs what toys are theirs and what toys are baby's. They're 3 things that we've been focusing on massively. So let's break those down a little bit. The first one, probably one of the biggest issues I see in my day-to-day home consults with, um, you know, people who have just had kids, I always try and look at like the, the deeper issue or the common denominator or the theme. And one of the biggest ones I see is people will go, you know, oh, our dog's our firstborn, and that whole narrative, which is cool. Mm-hmm. But people go from living in a very dog-centered universe, everything centered around the dog, to of course when you have a baby, that flips entirely. And that major change for our dog can definitely cause some anxiousness. a huge break in routine and structure, and then issues beyond that. Dogs can start to see resentment and be like, hey, ever since that little thing came along, my life has decreased massively in quality. This has happened, that's happened, all this like structure. So what I would say, if you do, you know, if you take an honest look at yourself and go, oh, you know what? Yeah, like we do really revolve our life around our dog. That's cool. But start making the change now. Dogs are very, very adaptable. Okay. Like I've seen dogs in all sorts of situations going from good to bad, bad to good. And dogs just adapt. It's one of their biggest strengths. But when they're forced to adapt, doing a total 180 almost overnight, that's when they can really struggle. And you can see a pretty tough adjustment period. So if you've got a baby on the way, start to make that shift now. And honestly, I tell clients, I'm like, go out, spend $20 at Kmart, buy a fake baby. You might feel like an absolute freak walking around the house with this little piece of plastic, but honestly, it's massive. Like, we've been doing it and getting Nelson used to that thing now. And I would say we're not the most dog-centric household. Surprise, surprise. Like, He fits in with our life, not the other way around. So when baby comes, it won't be this huge adjustment to him. So that's number one tip. If you are a very dog-centric household, start to shift that now because it is going to shift. It's inevitable. Like the newborn is going to become the most important thing in your world when that baby comes, as I'm sure Seb can attest to. But we can make that adjustment period far less stressful by starting that adjustment period now.

I was just saying, before you have kids, you think, oh, my life won't really change. You know, we'll just bring a baby into the world and, you know, we'll still do this. We'll still do that. We're still going to go out. And then you suddenly realize when the baby comes along, firstly, it is the most important thing in your world.

100%. Yeah. And like, just to add on to what you were saying, Neo, like if you walk your dog at the same time every single day, you feed him at the same time every day, that routine is going to get upset by having a child. You know, you're not going to want to get up at that, you know, 6:30 AM if you've only slept 2 hours, you know, you've got to introduce a little bit of adaptability with your dog. Same thing with feeding times. If it's the same time every day you feed your dog and your dog comes and presses you for the food, You know, and while you're in the middle of a feed and your dog starts getting frustrated, then yeah, you're going to run into problems for sure.

And that's life moving forward with children, because even now at the stage I'm at with a 4 and a 6-year-old, things happen all the time where, you know, suddenly with Kira, like our dog walking changes all the time through the week. It's, it's, it's sometimes it's the morning, but I, you know, and work as well gets in the way and the kids and stuff and after-school stuff and before-school stuff. And so she has to be adaptable to say, hey, you are going to still get what you want, but it might happen this afternoon. It might happen this morning. It might happen in the middle of the day. And if you can start that before the baby comes along, as you said, Max, like it's going to be so much easier for the dog to understand that, oh, okay, well, this is, nothing's really changed because this is how it's been for the last few months or whatever it might be.

Yes. Make the transition a lot slower. Yeah.

Awesome. All right. Number 2 is obedience while the baby is present. So one of the blessings and curses of our dogs is they struggle with something called generalisation. Which means when we show them a picture or a scenario or a, you know, training context, so to speak, the moment we start changing things about that, our dogs struggle to understand and think they need to do the same thing, basically. So what I'm saying is, if you've done all your obedience and all your training, your recall, sit, down, stay, parking, place training, whatever, without a baby present, the moment all of a sudden they go, there's a human attached to you. What do we do about this? Like, it's pretty confusing for our dogs to see. So I want your dog to start to, you know, you want to already start practicing walking beside the pram, getting your dog to come to you while you've got a baby on your chest, getting your dog to leave a room while you're holding a baby and getting used to all these different things. 'Cause I promise you, it will be pretty confusing to your dog. I know when we got our little fake baby that we've been using a couple of weeks back, and the first time I did a scenario with Nelson, all right, let's go out and let's do some healing and stuff. And he was like, is that the reward?

Yeah. Waiting for you to throw it.

Exactly. It's like things like that. Yeah. It was very confusing. So get used to practicing already going like, hey, you need to stay on your bed while the baby's on their little rocker. You need to still go outside when I send you outside while I'm holding the baby or baby's crying. So there's just things like that is getting your dog used to these situations and scenarios before they arrive. Because I promise you, one of the biggest things I get told a lot by clients is, oh my God, the anxiety we had driving home, not knowing how our dog was going to behave was just so huge and so real. And we wish we'd done this earlier. Versus I know when we come home in a couple months' time, we go, we've done so much prep for this, we're sweet.

Yeah, I did all, I did all the prep, and then on the day I was like, oh fuck, this is real now. This isn't just a fake baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah,

and then you get home and you see all those things pay off and you're like, 100%.

Yeah. Oh, it was like, it was like, I was so proud of my dog. I was so happy with him. Yeah, great job.

And then number 3, um, it's not the most important, but for us it's pretty important, is toys. We had our baby shower a couple weeks back and we were lucky enough to get some really, really beautiful toys. Little bananas in pajamas one in particular, uh, that Nelson had a very strong affinity to instantly. And Nelson, not growing up with kids in his house, has gone,

oh, the toys are for me.

Thank you so much, everyone. I'm gonna get stuck into these tonight. Yeah. So we came home and he wandered out with his little bananas pajamas in his mouth thinking he's the best dog ever. And we just went, nope, absolutely not. And so now we've started leaving these toys all over going, that's not one of yours. That's not one of yours. That's not one of yours. Yeah, that's one of yours. And just starting to paint that picture for our dog as well, because there's nothing worse than getting a really—

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, ...or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

This week, it pays extra to be a Milo's Rewards member. October 14th, members get $10 My Lowe's Money when you spend $200 or more on an eligible purchase during My Lowe's Money Days. Also using your My Lowe's Rewards credit card? Even better, that's an additional $20 My Lowe's Money. Use it to save on your next Lowe's haul. Exclusions, restrictions, and more terms apply. See lowes.com/mylowesmoneydays for details. My Lowe's Money expires 30 days after issuance. Subject to change. Credit offer subject to credit approval.

I love football season. The games, the rivalries, the food, getting everyone together. No game day feels complete without a trip to Total Wine and More. I can find everything from cold beer and canned cocktails to wines and spirits for the whole crew. And if I want to bring something different to the watch party, the Total Wine team always has ideas. Plus, it's nice knowing I'm getting the lowest prices. Get your game day lineup ready at Total Wine and More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21.

Really nice toy that's gifted, whether it's expensive or sentimental, whatever. Or maybe— I mean, you'd probably know more about this, but kids can get super attached to particular toys. And if that all of a sudden toy gets, hey, sorry, like our Rottweiler destroyed your toy. That's pretty heartbreaking, right? You go, oh, well, we got this from this really scat little shop in the middle of New South Wales. How the hell are we going to replace it? You're screwed. So that's one. Just while you're pregnant already, just start leaving baby toys around and show your dog, hey, that's not for you. That's not for you. Because baby stuff's expensive too.

Oh yeah, for sure. People give you gifts and then your dog destroys it. And

they go, does he love the teddy bear? Like, yeah, exactly. And

it's funny on those toy situations. I mean, on the other flip side, when you've got older kids, it's about teaching those kids that don't just leave stuff lying around. Yeah. You know, yes, it's fair enough. We teach the dog that some things are not theirs. But yeah, for me it's just like, it's very hard sometimes to teach Kira every single thing she's not allowed. You know, new things come in the house all the time. And we had a situation the other day where the kids bought these, these toy dogs, funnily enough, that walk around and bark. Yeah. And oh my God, I mean, trying to teach Kira, it's like, no, mate, we don't attack the— anyway, we were upstairs and all of a sudden I'm like, it's been quiet for a while. And I suddenly go downstairs and there she is. Destroying this, this toy dog thing. I'm like, oh my God. So yeah, it's also about teaching kids as well. We'll get more into that when we— when I get to my points. But yeah, it's about teaching your kids as well. Like, just don't leave shit lying around.

Just set them up for success. We had actually a funny similar thing the other day where I think Nelson started to realize that our little fake baby is a, is a human to some degree. So he took his tug toy up to it. He's like, grab the other end.

Oh yeah, he wanted to play tug. No, the baby is not playing tug.

Not yet. Not until you're a bit bigger. Yeah. Cool. So my top tips, number one is obviously like it makes it a lot easier if you have a trained dog already. So if you're thinking about, you know, potentially having a child within the next 15 years when you're going out to buy a dog or from a breeder or to adopt a dog or whatever, just consider, we might have a kid at some point in the future. Let's actually train our dog so we have a bit more control over that dog when the baby comes. And that also kind of extends to desensitising, you know, pulling the dog's ears when they're a puppy, like actually tugging on their ears a little bit, just enough to kind of get them used to it and then rewarding them and getting them kind of desensitized to all of those, you know, those things that babies and kids might do to your dog. And obviously like having obedience over your dog, being able to send your dog to a mat or to a place or, you know, to sit and stay or any of those things, to walk on a leash, all of those things that make it so much easier when you do have a child to do those things before the child's even In the picture at all. I find that makes it a lot easier. And we were lucky with Hagrid. You know, I'm a dog trainer. My dog's got to be pretty well trained, hopefully. So, you know, having all those foundational— all that foundational knowledge made it a lot easier for when the baby did come. So that's my number one tip. And that's probably a tip for anything. Just train your dog.

Doing that before pregnancy, because as all 3 of us know, the moment you find out you're pregnant, like, it begins. It's all the trips to Baby Bunting. It's the this, it's the appointments, it's the never-ending amount of things to do on the to-do list that if you go, all right, we found out we're pregnant, easy, I've got like 8 months for me to train the dog. That's heaps of time. I promise you'll go like that and you'll be on the way to the hospital going, oh shit, we didn't do any of that. So I'm saying like, if, if you're already in the stand of like planning for babies, factor that in. Go, all right, like we need to do this before we're pregnant because I promise you, once you're pregnant, that will take a backseat, which is normal.

Yeah.

And you've got to do it now.

You don't want to be thinking about, you know, your dog most of the time when you're planning on having a baby. You want the baby to be the focus. So yeah, 100%. That's my first tip is actually training your dog. The second is noise desensitization. Babies make crazy noises. In the last kind of— my baby's 5 and a half weeks as of recording this now. Some of the noises that they make, you know, it can be very suspicious to a dog. You know, like I have a German Shepherd. His name's Hagrid, I mentioned before. But when he hears anything new, he'll see it. He'll smell it. He's interested. He needs like, I mean, obviously it's in the breed to figure out, you know, okay, that's different. That's different to my environment. I've got to, I've got to be there for that. So like, you know, crazy noises that babies make can, can be a massive trigger. And I don't want my dog, you know, when my baby wakes up at 3 AM, I don't want my dog joining in by barking and being like, what is that? What is that? What is that? So noise desensitization was a massive one, literally playing crying baby noises through a speaker. At a low volume so the dog can kind of handle it. And then just, you know, doing some general obedience or even just, you know, rewarding the dog for noticing the sound, just so it becomes normal. And then just bringing them up randomly, you know, just all of a sudden you're in the kitchen doing some stuff and then all of a sudden a baby noise comes from a speaker in the corner and, you know, your dog might go, whoa, what's that? And then yes, you mark, you reward, you reward the dog for hearing it. And eventually you start fading out those rewards so that dogs just kind of go, oh yeah, that just happens sometimes. It's not a big deal. So that was a massive, massive one.

Exactly. If you head over actually to the Down Under Dog Training Instagram plug, sorry, shameless plug right now. Yeah, we've actually, by the time this episode comes out, we'll have a couple of reels on us doing that exact thing and just showing how you can do it.

Yeah, as well as noise desensitization, you know, like what Max mentioned before, that, you know, the generalization, the picture of, you know, holding a baby. I was kind of, you know, I looked probably like a crazy person. You know, I was carrying, carrying a baby with a speaker in, you know, with the baby in the swaddle, a fake baby. It's a fake baby, by the way, fake baby. Speaker on the, like wrapped up in the swaddle, playing the crying noises. And then I was actually, you know, using the voice that I would use to my baby, you know, and this is actually very similar to how you would talk to a dog, you know, like, oh, it's okay, baby. It's okay. You're making all those loud noises, those high-pitched noises. I don't want my dog to be like, oh, he's made bup bup bup. I want to come and body slam him. All right, we're playing. So, you know, getting him used to like, I don't know, holding, holding a position while I'm making those noises and talking to the baby while the baby is screaming or the hypothetical baby in this, in this case. So yeah, that's a really big one as well. Just the noises that the baby makes, but also the noises that you will make to settle the baby is a great point for sure. My third point is respecting space and respecting kind of boundaries. So when we moved into our— we're just renting. So when we moved into our new rental, it has an upstairs and a downstairs. And we knew like, hey, we're not pregnant now. We could potentially have a baby at some point in the next 5, 10 years, whatever. Let's just set it up easy, like to make it easier for ourselves. Now let's make some boundaries. Let's make, uh, make it a rule that the dog's not allowed to go upstairs. So upstairs we have our bedroom, we have the nursery in there. I don't really want a dog running around while I'm feeding my, my, my baby or my wife's feeding my baby or I'm changing the baby, whatever. I just set up really clear boundaries like, hey, you're not allowed up these stairs. If you don't have, if you don't have stairs, that's fine. You can 100% boundary train, you know, the nursery, for example, dog's not allowed to run into the nursery. Or even your personal space. This is another massive one that I've been working a lot with is teaching my dog like a 1.5 metre kind of diameter around me whenever I'm holding the baby or wherever the baby is. He's not allowed to just rush in and go straight in for that smell or that big lick or that paw to come and play with me. So that 1.5 metres has been massive for us. It's been super, super handy. And now I I, my dog's, he's allowed on the couch. You know, I'm a, I like having him there, but when I carry the baby and I sit down kind of near him, he will immediately get up off the couch and move aside because he knows, all right, this 1.5 bubble, a 1.5 metre bubble around my baby is kind of a no-go zone. And, you know, that was trained with lots of rewards. Like, hey, I sit down, I use your, you know, back up or away command, whatever it is. As soon as he finds that distance, bam, a treat arrives over, over there. Um, just teaching through that positive reinforcement, but also teaching through like, hey, if you do enter this, this space, there is a little bit of like a bit of body pressure, maybe some leash pressure to back away from this baby's space. Um, and that's been, that's been really, really handy, especially while my wife's feeding or the baby's asleep.

Shout out to Jade.

Shout out to Jade. Shout out to all the mums, actually. Slay.

And that's a great point is in terms of like, um, how to do this is I think you mentioned a great point there is using something called spatial pressure. So spatial pressure is that feeling we get like if we were standing in an elevator, the doors open, And so that we're not crowding the space, we'd instantly move back and make some space available. You can use that to your dog, and most dogs are pretty sensitive to this. So you can already start—

Apart from mine. Carry on.

So something like you can already do in terms of teaching to have boundaries is going like, hey, while I'm holding this baby, like Seb said, I want to go back to that 1.5 metre distance. Shout out to COVID. And just anytime your dog starts to enter that bubble, like, Moving forward with quite a bit of assertion. So your dog goes, oh, okay, sorry, I'll leave that. And they'll start to see that 1.5 metre line. And then in terms of teaching them to, you know, a lot— there's probably a lot of people out there listening to this go, yeah, you know, I'd love that for my dog to not go in the nursery or knock upstairs, but how do I teach that? We did an episode called At the Gate: Threshold Training That Could Save Your Dog's Life. It's a 9-minute episode. There's a video on the Facebook group as well. We recommend going back and brushing up on that resource because you can absolutely use that. inside and create some inside boundaries as well with the exact system.

I was going to say, for people who want to do that, how do they start doing that? So that'd be a great thing to watch.

Yeah, exactly. The exact same system is applicable anywhere. So if you are listening, going, how do I do that? Spatial pressure, our 3-step system for the gate can be used inside as well.

Yeah, just generally just a very good thing to teach your dog for safety.

1 million percent.

Yeah.

All right. Well, thanks for your 3 top tips,

Seb. My top tips are going to be different because obviously I am not I'm not an expert when it comes to dog training or anything like that. As I always say at the start of every episode, I'm purely an enthusiast. I'm not an expert when it comes to children either. Although, you know, I, for me, it's obviously different. You know, I have 2 kids, 4 and 6. Kira sort of came into our world. We had dogs before, so my kids are used to being around dogs. And in fact, the kids have always been around dogs because we've had dogs when they were babies and stuff like that. But as they've got older, for me, it's about more teaching them how to respect the dog. And teaching Kira how to respect them as well and their space and that sort of stuff. You know, she knows that if they're eating, that she's to be nowhere near them. In fact, one of my greatest things I've ever taught her by accident is that when I serve up the kids' food on a plate, she'll just go to her mat.

Nice. Love that.

Purely by accident. Because I think every time I've brought the food out, I've said, put her on her mat. Now she just automatically does it when I bring the plates out. But with the kids, it's, there's a number of things that I've, I think are just 100% must teach when it comes to your kids and dogs. We're keen to hear your wisdom because your years of

So we're sitting here as new dad and soon-to-be new dad now, keen to get your pearls of wisdom.

Students in this.

Yeah. Sit, my students, and allow me to teach you the ways. Number one is obviously a huge one. It's like, leave the dog when it's eating. If the dog is eating, we do not go near the dog. We don't touch the dog. We don't go near the dog's food. Now you might say, oh, my dog's fine. I can, you know, pick up the bowl and the dog doesn't do anything like that. And that's all well and good. But you can never be like 100% certain. Like you just don't, because I've seen her, like she's not an aggressive dog in any way, shape, or form. But when we've had other dogs here before and, you know, she may have had a bone, I've seen this slight glimmer in her that she's like, stay the fuck away from my bone. So like, I just want to mitigate any issues. So the kids learned that like, if Kira's eating, no-go zone.

100%.

And that 100% goes for her sleeping as well. We don't wake the dog if the dog's sleeping. We don't yell at the dog because again, a startled dog.

Yeah.

It's not, you know, it's like anything. You get startled awake.

Yeah.

You know, you're swinging.

It's a great point. I actually had 2 cases of that last year where dogs had shown some pretty extreme aggression to kids. And these dogs had grown up with the kids. They'd had the most amazing relationship for years. They showed me videos of where, you know, the kids playing with the dog and wrestling and climbing on them and the dog. I was like, genuinely, I'm sitting here. And I'm sitting there as a behavior expert looking at it going, there's not a single worrying body language cue. Like, this dog's chill about this whole thing happening. But then they're like, then the dog really lashed out pretty bad when woken up. And we've, you know, I'm sure you've seen that too, but seen that a lot where some dogs when they're woken up are like fucking violent for about 2 seconds if they're startled. They're kind of like, you know, the whole shoot first, ask questions later. Yeah. And then afterwards they go, oh God, like I did that thing. So I would say, like, you know, get, like you said, don't, don't wake a dog up, especially with your kids, just by like startling. That's huge. Because yeah, we've seen some pretty bad things.

Yeah.

And literally those first 2 points they like that you've made are awesome points. A really easy way to kind of stop this from happening entirely is just crate train your dog and feed your dog in the crate.

100%. And then that's the thing, like crates are such a great thing and Kira spends less time in a crate now. But you're teaching— I teach my kids that if there is a dog here and it's in a crate, it means it wants to be left alone. So we don't touch the dog. And then the dog learns that that's its space to go when it wants. And, you know, obviously we've spoken about crates before and the crate debate about people, don't cage dogs and all that sort of stuff. It's actually a tool for your dog to have somewhere to go, especially if you do have kids. Exactly. You know, and you get to the age that I'm at. And then one of the worst things about being a parent of children this age is something called birthday parties. because they're the worst thing ever. I hate them. Shout out to all the parents who I love to see.

They sound like heaps of fun at parties.

I just try and avoid them.

Like, I had my baby shower the other day and I had, I had 3 little, like, children over at my house and I was kind of like, you know, these kids don't have dogs in their house. I don't know how they're going to respond to seeing a dog. They're probably going to run up, stick their hands down his throat. I don't know. Yeah. So, you know, the easiest thing for me and the easiest thing for my dog Hagrid was to just Pop him in his crate. He fell asleep. He slept through the whole thing. He came out and then he picked up all the bits of sausage that the kids had squished into my carpet.

So stunning.

Welcome to parenthood. Yeah. So good.

If something had happened and Hagrid had nipped a kid, it's that it's always going to be the dog's fault. Never going to be the kid's fault ever. You know, because you have people that, you know, have their kids, they don't have, they probably don't have dogs. The kid can't do a fucking thing wrong. It's, you know, sunshine's out of his ass. It may have been sitting there poking the dog, kicking the dog, pulling the dog's ear. The dog's putting up with it and putting up with it, and eventually the dog goes snap. And then it's 100% the dog's fault every time. Yeah.

They communicate with their teeth. So like,

this comes to my next point is like teaching kids how to interact with dogs and that we are nice with dogs. Because my kids have always grown up around dogs and I've done my best to teach them how we treat dogs. We don't pull the dogs' ear. We don't pull the, you know, things happen. Kids are emotionally charged beings that are still working out their own thoughts and feelings and things work. And sometimes they'll lash out. And my daughter, probably a couple of years ago now, but she was frustrated or angry about something and the dog sort of got in her way and she kicked the dog and I saw her kick the dog. I'm like, no, we don't do that. Like, and we had that big discussion about this. You just don't do that. And so my kids know that there is never any aggression shown towards the dog whatsoever. We don't push the dog. We don't pull the dog. If the dog is frustrating you, you call dad and then dad will sort it out.

Yeah. Great point.

That's really good.

Training your kids as well as the dog.

And also just on that, like having, having a dog first kind of, for me anyway, it's helped a lot with just having— obviously I've only had a child for 5 weeks, but like there's a lot of concepts that kind of roll over from owning a dog.

What am I always saying on this show? I'm always saying literally having a dog is no different having a kid.

Yeah.

Like teaching the same way.

So many parallels.

It gives me a lot of hope.

No, there really is. Like, it's honestly, it's like teaching and training dogs is so Similar to what you do have to do with kids, you know, routines and things like that, teaching them right and wrong and socialization, following through 100%. I had to do it with my son last night. Like, it's just—

Put him in his crate.

Yeah, I did. I put him in his room. That's his crate. And when he cried, it's not about letting him out because then he learns if he just cries, then he gets stuff. It's so similar. So yeah, so those are, those are the tips, I suppose, around those 3 different phases in your life, wherever you are at. There is no reason why dogs and kids cannot live in harmony together without any of these issues that you see. You know, I mean, I think my biggest thing is like, I just, it makes me cringe. And every time I see a video online of a kid jumping all over a dog and everyone filming it thinking it's cute. And I'm just like, please don't. You know, like, I mean, you know, because it might be fine 9 times out of 10, but it only has to go wrong once.

Yeah. And even you see the dog's body language in a lot of the videos, like I'm sitting there just going, oh no,

no, no, no, no. Whale eyes, lip licking.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right. As always, got any questions? Don't forget to hit us up. The Dog People Podcast on Facebook and Instagram. We'll see you next time.

Thumbtack presents Tile Trouble. Every single time I use my sink, I make eye contact with the uneven grout on my kitchen backsplash. The crooked corners eye me, and I'm haunted by more tiling questions than I thought possible. What kind of pro can fix a backsplash? Can I replace one cracked tile, or should I replace them all? Oh, what— What if I just used Thumbtack? I can hire top-rated pros, read reviews, and compare prices with a tap, all on the app. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today.