By Sonia Gregson of Helensburgh business Sonia Says Sit

How can you prepare young children for owning a puppy/dog? 

Talk to them about the things that will need to happen like feeding, picking up after them, walking and playing. Sit together and write the list of words/cues and hand signals you will use with your new puppy. Set clear boundaries about when and how to touch the puppy.

How should you introduce your dog to your children? 

Ask the children to sit down while you hold the puppy to allow them both to see each other. There is no need to reach hands out towards ANY dog as their sense of smell is somewhere between 10,000 to 100,000 times more acute than ours. Give the puppy a chance to approach the children and, if either the puppy or child is nervous, allow for more space.

What are your top 'watch outs' for children and puppies? 

Puppies don’t have wings so they shouldn’t fly i.e., don’t pick up your new puppy no matter how small or cute. Encourage the child to sit on the floor and ask the puppy to climb into their lap. Puppies are wriggly and can be easily dropped and injured. Allowing puppies to rest is very important, so creating a safe space like a crate or pen that is out of bounds for the children allows the puppy to retreat when needed. Never touch, pick up or wake a sleeping puppy. Never touch a puppy while they are eating. It is an instinct for dogs to guard their resources and touching them while eating can cause this to appear.

What games would help bond your dog and children? 

There are lots of easy games around Enrichment ideas. Our favourite is to avoiding feeding the puppy out of a bowl. Scatter feeding on concrete, not grass, using old cardboard boxes to hide food in, creating treasure hunts for the puppy to sniff out the food, making frozen dog ice cubes for hot weather and teething. A game of Tug of war with a rope toy provides distance between hands and the puppy's sharp baby teeth. Teach the rules of the game. If your mouth comes near my hand, the game stops and I drop the toy and some important words/cues like “gentle”, “open your mouth” and “leave it”.

There are 6 types of enrichment for dogs.

• Social enrichment – beach, dog parks, creeks, etc.

• Cognitive enrichment – puzzle toys, Hide and Seek games, etc.

• Physical enrichment – dig pit, tunnels, different surfaces, walks, swims etc.

• Sensory enrichment – bubbles, herb garden, scent work, “sniffari”, farm and wild animal (bunny/deer) poo or fur, wind chimes, recorded noises etc.

• Feeding enrichment – food ice blocks, “licki” mats etc. 

• Toy enrichment – remote and wind-up toys, lure and flirt poles, stuff old clothing with anything smelly like seaweed, bark, rabbit poo etc.

What responsibilities can you pass onto your children for caring for your dog? 

Brushing. Gentle brushing from an early age can help the puppy enjoy being brushed and enjoy having children close by.

Do you have anything else to add?

The team at Sonia Says Sit believe that children make great trainers and can have a lot a fun teaching general manners and fun tricks. Once the puppy can “sit” and then “lay down” on request, you can teach roll over, crawl, spin, middle, sit pretty and much more.

Keeping both the children and puppy safe and enjoying each other's company is about setting up a relationship based on trust. Clear and consistent boundaries and easy to understand cues/words and hand signals are essential.

We also like to educate children on how to read dog body language as dogs' communication is mainly non verbal and a lot is “said” with their TEMP = Tail, Teeth, Tongue, Ears, Eyes, Mouth and Posture.

Sonia Says Sit offers puppy preschool, puppy playgroup, group lessons for teenage, adult and older dogs, behaviour consultations and in-home lessons. Training classes are force free and contain up-to-date science-based, positive training methods. Training has been shown to be the single most important thing that keeps dogs with their original family for life.