Baby finds dog bowls

Yun let Baby crawl around on the hardwood floor today. He seems to have an easier time moving around on the hardwood floor as opposed to the carpet. He's not exactly crawling in the classic sense yet, but he's quite mobile. Unfortunately, a mobile baby gets into A LOT more stuff, like the dog bowls! Ack! I hope I never see the day when Baby tries to drink from the dog bowls, though I've heard such stories from other parents with dogs.

Loki and Jujube with another child

Last night, we had a couple and their two year old boy over for dinner.

How did our pups do? Well, Jujube was an angel, like always. She's such a sweetie and we're so glad that we have her. For one thing, it's so nice to say to a child that while you can't touch that one (referring to Loki), you can pet and hug this one (Jujube).

Loki is slowly improving with kids, but he's still quite wary. He didn't bark at the child as much as he has in the past with other kids of that age. But he did growl on two occasions.

The first growl came when the boy went to pet Loki. Growl. I had to explain that he could pet the dog with the pink collar, but not the dog with the green collar. Good thing this kid already knew his colors.

The boy was having quite a bit of fun with Jujube. She stood there and let him do pretty much anything to her. Pet her, hug her, follow her around. After he had his fun hugging Jujube, he suddenly went to hug Loki. In that split second, my heart simultaneously raced and stopped. Loki let out his warning growl, and we all shouted at the boy to let Loki go.

His mom asked, "Oh but he won't bite, right?"

I immediately replied that Loki might. Even after a year of no bites, I still remain cautious about Loki, especially around children. I do tell people that he will bite. I sense that Yun may disagree with me on this. Yun probably wouldn't want to alarm people the way I do. But I absolutely do not want any kids getting bit by Loki, and a good, honest warning will prevent that from happening.

In the end, I think Loki was great. He gave the boy warning growls with nothing more. The boy heeded those warnings and Loki learned that a warning growl is a sufficient to communicate his displeasure. Of course, I'd prefer Loki to be more like Jujube in his friendliness towards children, but I'm happy with what I've got so far.  Loki may never truly be good with children, but with ever experience, he gets just a little bit better.

Baby feeding Juju

Baby thinks it's funny when Juju licks his hand. Juju thinks rice cereal is yummy. These two are going to develop such a great relationship.

Learning his name

Last night, we were talking to our baby as usual (he can't talk yet), and then all of a sudden it occurred to me that he seemed to respond to his name. I got super excited.

"I think he knows his name! Look he just turned his head to look at us."

So then, Yun says, "Oh! You have to do positive reinforcement!"

"Uh? You mean like when you train the dogs?"

"Yeah!"

So then we proceed to call out our baby's name and then heap on an extra dose of praise when he gave the slightest hint of responding to our calls.

He must be thinking, "What strange parents."

Cheerios

From time to time, I give my baby Cheerios. He's supposed to eat them, but mostly he just plays with them. Inevitably, they end up on the floor for the dogs to gobble up.

Here's Loki, eager for the treats that just fall from the baby's chair. Dogs are great for clean up! I don't have to ever sweep or pick up the floor of food products.

Here's the view from Loki's eyes:

Jujube and Baby

More babies

Over the past weekend, we had some friends over, including a baby who is the same age as our Baby. The dogs did very well with the small visitor. Yay! I was a bit apprehensive about the whole situation. But both dogs behaved very well. Jujube was more nosy. She was fishing for attention, which she got. She didn't mind being prodded, poked, and grabbed at. She's a very sweet girl. Loki also behaved well, but he after his initial sniffing, he stayed back. He wasn't going to join Juju in being prodded, poked, and grabbed at.

Baby cries at dog

Just because Baby lives with two dogs doesn't mean that he is comfortable with all dogs. This weekend, we took Baby with us to a friend's house. Our friend had a small, hyper dog that loved to play fetch and never sat down. For some unknown reason, Baby started crying when he was around that dog. We have no idea why the dog upset him, but it did. The dog wasn't mean, didn't bark, and ignored Baby. At first we were really puzzled as to what was making Baby upset. But we guessed it was the dog, And our suspicions were confirmed when Baby was perfectly fine as soon as the dog was put away in a bedroom.

So just because your baby or child grows up with dogs doesn't mean that he'll be comfortable around every dog.

Texts about Loki and Baby

Yun picks up Baby after work. During this time, I am still at work, so everyday Yun gets to spend a couple hours with Baby alone. Every so often, I get random texts updating me on their latest adventures.

One day last week:

Yun: Baby punched loki in the face =P
Me: Oh no!
Yun: He was just surprised not angry

One day this week:

Yun: He got to pet both dogs
Me: How'd he do?
Yun: Well

Yun tells me that Loki is actually very curious and well behaved around Baby. He reports that when Loki sniffed Baby, their noses were almost touching. And Baby was laughing and happy. I was and still am apprehensive about Loki being around Baby. We are always careful to monitor them when they are together. I get nervous when I receive these texts, but it seems like everything is going well. Maybe it's the start of a wonderful relationship between Baby and Loki.

Couple more kids

We had two kids in our home today, although not at the same time.

The little youngster, my cousin's daughter, returned to our home late Friday evening and stayed until early Saturday afternoon. Loki was still barky, but definitely better than before. A few more visits and he would've been fine.

Later in the evening we also had a six month old baby visit our home for a couple of hours.  Jujube was extremely curious and sniffed all around the baby.  Loki wasn't curious like Jujube.  He wasn't initially barky, but did end up barking at the baby later on. Unfortunately, this visitor was also from out of town, so we won't be getting any repeat exposures.

I've come to realize that although I want to use positive reinforcement, the thought doesn't occur to me until after the problem presents itself. And by that point, it might be too late. (Well, it's never really too late to train, but it's less than ideal.) When the baby first arrived, we were caught up in greeting our visitors, and I was trying to make sure that Jujube wasn't getting into the baby's face too much. I didn't notice Loki's non-barking (Why would you? He's not barking.) It would have been a good time to give him treats for not barking. That way you establish a positive association right away. Ideally, you want to give him treats for behaving well. If he starts barking, then you have to get him to be quiet first. Ignoring the behavior, waiting for him to lose interest and get quiet on his own takes way too long. So, inevitably, I use negative feedback. Something along the lines of:

"Loki, quiet."

Bark

"Uh-uh, quiet."

Bark

"Loki, sit"

Sits and barks.

"Uh-uh, Loki, quiet."

All of the "Uh-uh"s are negative feedback. I do believe in the importance of negative verbal feedback (some people don't), but I still acknowledge that it is indeed negative. And so, the initial association with the baby is negative. It's not very negative, just slightly. The initial association is of being wary, being fearful, and hearing negative feedback. I think it's very easy and almost natural to make a dog's first impression of a baby negative. The first thing a mother holding a newborn wants to do is to shush her barking dog. It's practically instinctive. And so the dog's first impression is negative.

Still, in retrospect I have to think that maybe we handled the situation today correctly. I think that it's important to greet your out of town visitors right away and give them your full attention. And it's possible that Loki wouldn't have barked at all at a baby. Who knew? I thought that he wouldn't care about a baby who wasn't independently mobile.

With all that happened today, the current plan is to give Loki treats immediately when our baby comes home, so that his initial impression is of good things and not of being shushed.

Oh no! A kid in our home!

This past weekend, my cousin's family came to visit. They have a 2 year old girl, and Loki does not like children, especially young ones. He barked at this little intruder all weekend long. Ugh! So annoying! At first I tried ignoring it, hoping that his barking would eventually subside. It didn't. Then we tried giving the little girl treats to give to Loki. This worked to silence the barking for about 20 minutes. We did this repeatedly throughout their visit. Then, I also tried sitting next to him, projecting calm energy, and petting him. This only sort of worked for the duration that I was with him.

He was able to remain calm for long periods of time if she remained in our living room or the guest bedroom and didn't venture into the kitchen, dining room, or hallways. If she was in her space and he was in his, then he was happy. Any disruption to equilibrium was stressing to him.

If my cousin wanted her daughter to learn that not all dogs are nice, then Loki definitely succeeded in teaching her that lesson.

Unfortunately, my cousin and her family do not live near us. Otherwise, I'd bet if they visited regularly, then Loki would get used to it and finally stop barking. They have left us temporarily for the week, having gone to the hotel of the conference they're attending. They will be back on Friday. I hope Loki will be better the second time around.

So, yeah, yeah, I know, we have a baby on the way, and this isn't a good sign. A suggestion that I often hear and read about is to expose Loki to more children and to train him to behave around them with positive reinforcements. A nice idea in theory, but I have two problems. One, I don't have the time. Two, using children who are strangers as training guinea pigs doesn't seem like a good idea to me. (I have no friends with children in the area.) Not all children are well-behaved and the last thing Loki needs is a bad experience. Some kids will poke and prod, which I understand that's just what kids do, but Loki will lash out and bite. And that would not be good.

What worked the best in socializing Loki with adults and visitors was simply for us to have lots of our friends over. The more visitors we had, the better he got. Trying to schedule time for specific training didn't work as well. It's a bit artificial and unnatural. It's not a bad idea, but it requires a lot of time and effort. When we simply had visitors over, it was more natural and wasn't a chore. The focus wasn't so much on the dog, but rather just going about our lives. Loki eventually learned and adapted to our lives. In some ways, I think that this is a good approach to training a dog -- just go about your lives as you normally do, and let the dog adapt to your life. [Disclaimer: I'm not a dog expert, and this is not expert advice.]

I'm hoping that I will be able to do that with children. Trying to schedule specific times and situations to train him with children might work and might be helpful, but it requires time, effort, and seems like a chore. If we just go about the course of our lives, then perhaps Loki will simply learn to adapt to our lives.

Of course, I plan to always manage the situation between my dogs, especially Loki, and my future baby. Between the choices of training or managing, I'll have to opt more on the side of managing. Even with training, I'm not convinced that he'd ever behave reliably around children.

P.S. Jujube, on the other hand, is absolutely wonderful with children. My cousin's little girl identifies Jujube as "Go-go no bark". (Go-go means dog in Chinese.)

Some new adventures ahead

Three years ago, Yun and I were newlyweds. We spent half a year in marital bliss, but soon I was antsy for something more. Our family of two didn’t feel complete; yet, it was too early for us to think about having a baby. Caught between the desire for a richer family and not being ready for a baby, we got a puppy. This is how Loki came into our lives.

Loki was our practice child, and he taught us many things. He taught us what it meant to care of someone else. He taught us how to divide the responsibilities of caring for a helpless creature. And he taught us what it was like to disagree about parenting philosophies.