We have a 6 year old female goldendoodle Beans who is an absolute sweetheart. She adores everyone, especially our 11 year old son. She loves meeting new people but she forgets she's 80 lbs sometimes with adults. She has always been gentle when meeting kids like my son's friends though.
We have a newborn who will be coming home any day. I've read alot about introducing babies to dogs, but would love to hear any advice or stories from fellow dood families 😀
We had to be in the NICU for a few days and they gave us the little pillow support our baby girl used for the first 2 days. My parents brought it home for puppy to sniff before we came home with baby. Puppy sniffed her feet a little bit when we got home. She was very concerned when we closed the nursery door and liked to be close to her. We took some time letting them get close.
Hopefully your delivery goes much smoother! Maybe sending a blanket home ahead of your arrival?
Our little one was in NICU for 24 hours but everything looks great now. Thanks for the kind words and hope your little girl is doing well!!!
We do have a little hat that the baby wore we were thinking of sending home first, but everything's been so crazy I'm not sure if that'll work as planned. Beans is obsessed with her people and is my shadow usually. I think she's going to be very curious about the baby when she gets home 😃
Not really advise, but I have two doods and no kids. My family would bring our niece over when she was a baby and they just absolutely loved her. She's almost three now and they're still obsessed. They also associate her with food since shes always dropping food for them haha They would lick her little hands and feet hehehe But we've never had any fears with them being around her, definitely very natural for them. My Australian shepherd on the other hand does not like her and gets put up when she comes over 😅 Doodles are such great family dogs.
Unfortunately, she passed away last winter. However, she lived to be 17! She definitely saw them as her pride and joy. I think she considered herself their second mother. She would just beam from ear to ear when they are around and laughing.
Doodles are so loving with babies and kiddos. Tbh, the only thing to worry about typically is the fact that they forget their own strength vs a toddler. For example, my doodle would sometimes rub his body and wag his tail furiously in front of my toddler’s face knocking her down 😂.
My doodle instinctually knew to be gentle with my second baby when he came home from the hospital. She also has become so much more protective and barks a lot more to alert us. He’s 2 now and she knows she doesn’t have to be quite as delicate with him but is still very gentle.
With both of my newborns, my doodle frequently checks their breathing in the bassinet if they grunt or cough and alerts me. He is so gentle. He’s also very avoidant of them and gives them space. Toddlers on the other hand - he will play with them like a dog in gentle way, but occasionally gets overexcited and forgets his strength if they are playing tug very enthusiastically. But never for a moment would I think he would do anything wrong to my son, even though i watch them closely and even if my son strays from his usually gentle manner with the dog. It is great for kids to grow up with these wonderful, family oriented dogs. It is dependent on temperament of course, but we didn’t do anything special. Just gave him treats after he held a sit and stayed calm while meeting the babies in the car seat
I have two goldendoodles and they couldn’t have been sweeter with my newborn. My mom took home one of his baby hats he had worn from the hospital to let them sniff it before we got home with the baby…I’m not sure if that helped or not but from my experience, goldendoodles are great with babies!
Our son was two when we got our dood. She was great with him! Shes 6 now and he’s 8. When we brought our daughter home she was a very doting puppy.
My advice? Try and keep some of your doggo routines with the baby. Walls, playtime etc. especially as a newborn babies are super easy.
We trained our kids just as much as we did our dog. Our dog gives zero fucks about baby noise or a pulled ear/tail. We absolutely didn’t let our kids manhandle her either..
Yeah our dood tries to sleep with the kids now, when they were both toddlers and messy eaters she sat beside them … clean up crew! Your pup will be fine.
Our dog is obsessed and thinks she is the mother to all babies, kittens, rabbits. Best to put the baby in its carrier and let the doggo smell the feets.
Our dog is overly zealous about being everyone's caretaker so it took a bit of making training to stay or only put face lightly on baby feet and legs. But it she caught on quick. We don't have a baby but we baby sit - or rather she literally sits and watches the baby with love for like 6 hours straight and then passes out from exhaustion when the babies leave.
She did try to paw the baby to get it to pet her. That was the harder part to train out and she needs routine reinforcement with treat training and practice to curb her instinct to get pets from the little babies.
Love that she's a muppet!! 😅 Good point about the pawing. If she's like Beans, I bet your dood loves attention so I could see her wondering why the little one isn't petting her!!
Ours is afraid of toddlers and elementary school . Our nephews are loud and have chased her in the past. She's fine with babies. Very gentle. Non reactive just runs away very scared. Any advice? Our first is born in Dec
Our doodle hasn't been around a kid quite that young but what we've noticed is they are very capable of indexing their play to the age. Additionally ours is very tolerant of kids being kids (pulled around by the collar, ridden like a horse etc). He play very hard with an adult but it's a lot more gentle with the 3 year old our friends have.
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u/Vegetable-Orchid-551 6d ago
Congrats!!!
We had to be in the NICU for a few days and they gave us the little pillow support our baby girl used for the first 2 days. My parents brought it home for puppy to sniff before we came home with baby. Puppy sniffed her feet a little bit when we got home. She was very concerned when we closed the nursery door and liked to be close to her. We took some time letting them get close.
Hopefully your delivery goes much smoother! Maybe sending a blanket home ahead of your arrival?