Canine

In a comment on a recent post Valerah asked:

How has gus reacted to the bebe’s arrival in general? did you do anything to make his transition easier?

Gus has adapted to this tiny interloper remarkably well. Adam’s older sister has four children and Gus has been around two of them fairly regularly since they were newborns, and was always very sweet with them so we didn’t have any concerns about how he would act around a baby.

Nonetheless, I let him sniff everything we bought as I brought it home (most of the stuff was secondhand and I figured it carried a generic “baby” smell) and halfheartedly tried to train him not to bark at the door in the hopes that he wouldn’t wake a sleeping baby with his guard-dog histrionics.

When we actually brought Olive home, we first left her car seat outside of our fence because Gus hadn’t seen us in five days and we knew there’d be a fair bit of bouncing around. After we greeted him we instructed him to sniff her through the fence, then slowly brought her car seat inside of the yard and let her smell her again.

Since then he doesn’t seem too interested in her, he does a lot of watching her from afar and I have a feeling this will stay the norm until she’s old enough to sneak him food from her high chair.

As I mentioned before, Gus has always been wonderful around babies but I still don’t leave him alone with Olive for any extended period of time because I’m paranoid and keep thinking of this horrible incident in Ontario where the (hitherto well behaved and friendly) family dog attacked and killed their new baby because it mistook the baby’s cries for the sounds of wounded prey.

Adam says I’m crazy, I say have you SEEN the size of this dogs mouth? He wouldn’t even have to chew.

That is all.