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Boxer acting out...
I have a year old boxer and a six month old baby. My dog loves the baby. Loves.the.baby. In fact, he's getting a little protective of her when I get on the ground and play with her. He's starting to gnaw on me and put himself between her and I. He's nearly 70 lbs and while he's never come close to hurting her, he has knocked me over a few times! I end up putting him in his crate when we want to play but I can't do this for forever. Plus I feel bad since he's generally a well behaved dog and I don't want him to resent the baby over time.
We're also having problems getting him inside the house. He'll knock on the door and when we open the door, he runs away and refuses to come in. We don't leave him out there unattended, it's mainly for him to go to the bathroom and lay in front of the glass door when it's warm (he's in full view of me the whole time). Again, this is relatively new behavior.
Both of these behaviors started well after the baby got here so I'm unsure if they're correlated. I know you ladies have a lot of good advice in terms of animals so I'm hoping you have some good words for me. Sorry for the wall of text, I'm on my iPad. Thanks!
Re: Boxer acting out...
Is your dog good with a stay command? Because if it were my dog, I'd be putting him on a down-stay, and enforcing it, while I was interacting with the baby. Or, go-to-your-bed, if he gets that. He needs to be made to understand that while his presence is welcomed, his current behavior is not acceptable. I'd also be careful about attributing it to protectiveness. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but a lot of the time, a dog's real motivations for acting the way he does has absolutely nothing to do with what you think it does.
The running away seems like a no-brainer to me, having lived with a dog who did this constantly. It's attention-seeking behavior, and I suspect it started once the baby came because that's when you became distracted and didn't have as much time to lavish attention on your pooch. He's basically saying "come out and chase me," and if you give in, you're just reinforcing it. Personally, I'd just leave him out there for 30 minutes after he does it, and then rinse and repeat if he does it again once you finally open the door, but I'm probably in the minority here with that. I don't have a problem with leaving my dog unattended in the yard as long as I'm home and can check on him periodically.
Also (and I do know how hard this is with a baby), it might help a lot if you could get him out for a walk every day. Not just for the exercise, but so he feels you're still focused on him. New babies are hard on dogs. Good luck!
Yeah...we're working on down and go to your bed. He does behave a lot better on the days he gets a walk so it sounds like I need to work harder at making sure he gets one. With the weather getting nicer I have less of an excuse. I'll also look into the NILF training because lord knows I need it too! Thanks again.
I'm glad for your advice - I just posted about our boxer/bulldog mix misbehaving now that we've brought the babe home. We used to do down-stays, but have let that routine slip, maybe its time to start back up again.
When we come home & she's ripped up the mail, I never know if I should discipline her or not. She's obviously doing it for attention - so by disciplining her I feel like I'm giving her attention, but I also feel like she needs to know it's not acceptable.
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