What to Do When the Baby Arrives After the Dog
(in other words: welcome to the jungle)
Once upon a time, a young man decided to give his fiancée a “unique” gift. A box. What was inside the box? A black-and-brown puppy. A sweet little Doberman baby. They named him Hector. He grew up to be something between a dog, a human, and… a roommate with serious attitude.
Hector slept on the girl’s bed, wrapped in the blanket like he paid rent. In the summer, when he got hot, he would jump in the bathtub and wait for someone to cool him down, because obviously he was royalty. The couple got married, the girl got pregnant, and nine months later I appeared. The miracle. The joy of the house. The centre of the universe. Or so they liked to believe.
Hector did not share that enthusiasm.
He got jealous.
And not a little bit.
Suddenly he had to share attention with a creature that couldn’t even walk. He became aggressive. He gave me threatening looks. He claimed my mother whenever she held me. My parents, young and inexperienced, had no idea what to do. They decided to move Hector out into the garden. They built him a nice doghouse and allowed him inside only a few hours a day.
It took him a long time to accept me. And who can blame him? It took four whole years before he let me pet him without looking at me like I had stolen his throne.
Which… I had.
Fast forward 30 years.
My husband and I adopt a tiny, fragile “angel”, which we later found out was the wrongest possible description (story for another day). We became “parents” for the first time. Dog-parents. After Harris turned two, we discovered we were expecting a baby.
Harris had already been trained, so we called the trainer again. He gave us the following instructions:
1. The baby cloth
While I was still at the hospital, we placed a little cloth in the baby’s bassinet, and my husband took it to Harris. So he’d get familiar with the smell. Download the new family update.
2. Coming home
The day we returned, we made sure Harris wouldn’t see us entering. We placed the baby in the cradle and I sat far away. My husband brought Harris in on a leash. The dog saw me after four days → celebration. Once the party was over, he lifted his nose and smelled something new. He approached the cradle hesitantly. We kept him on the leash, not to pull him back, but for safety. He sniffed the baby, wagged his tail, and tried to lick it.
Mission accomplished.
Game unlocked.
Player 4 joined successfully.
Why it works
Because we want the dog to believe he discovered the baby.
Not us.
Not the universe.
Him.
That’s how he loves it.
That’s how he protects it.
That’s how you get the best unpaid bodyguard in existence.
Of course: the baby is never to be left alone with the dog, no matter how perfectly they get along. Same rule as with older siblings, just that the dog has bigger teeth.
The Jealousy Crisis
When my son started crawling, Harris was shocked.
So shocked that he began peeing inside the house.
We rushed him to the vet. Perfect tests.
So… it was behavioural.
We turned again to the trainer. He pointed out our mistake:
We had treated the dog like he was equal to the child.
So Harris entered a mental state of “wait, am I also a child? Then why does that one get the best treats?”
He started competing with the toddler and when he realised he was losing → anxiety.
A dog needs a clear hierarchy to be calm and happy.
He doesn’t mind being the… 15th in line.
As long as he knows his place.
The solution
We isolated Harris whenever the baby was eating or when we were playing together. Close enough to see us, but not close enough to interfere.
Every day, one of us played only with him for a few uninterrupted minutes. Quality time. No distractions.
Three days.
That’s all it took for balance to return.
When the second baby arrived?
Same method.
Harris accepted it easily and with even more enthusiasm. We’ll never know if it was because he’d done this before… or because of chemistry.
🖤 zerofack$: The dog’s jealousy faded. The mother’s exhausted face? Never.
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