I was nervous.  Probably more about this than giving birth. That’s only a slight exaggeration. Read my ode to Mackenzie. How was my precious first born dog-ter going to react, feel, adjust when we brought home our human daughter and incorporated her into our daily routine? Would there be a routine? Would she stop eating? Would she engage the baby or pretend she didn’t exist? Would she be aggressive? Or depressed? Would she bark more? Less? How was I going to adjust to life with a newborn and make my little pup feel like she wasn’t being replaced?

Obvioisly I turned to Pinterest… Here are a couple of the links I found most helpful in preparing for the big transition:

ASPCA – so detailed, step by step instructions. Yes please.

Pregnant chicken – easy to read quick tips

We didn’t do everything that the Pinterest gurus told us to… But here’s the reality of what we attempted and what worked for us and what didn’t:

• Gearing up – Babies require more gear, equipment, supplies and just stuff than I even thought to anticipate. As a direct result of the extreme generosity of our friends and family and perhaps my new found hobby of shopping spree-ing at babies r us, our home filled rather quickly with all the accoutrements of baby-bearing and child-rearing. My husband and I understood (kind of) the need/want for all this… The dog did not. And the poor thing had to live in this suddenly extra cluttered house too. So we set things up – put the furniture in the nursery, opened all the boxes, set up the pack and play… All that jazz. You want to prep the house anyway and have everything in place, but the dog definitely benefitted from having it all out there too. In particular, we wanted her to get used to the things that would be on the floor (laid the rug in the nursery, opened the brightly colored floor playmat thing – technical term and the low to the ground bouncer). Those would be things most accessible to her and most invasive of her domain.  Pretty soon there will be a new very loud noise maker lying on that floor and its best to have the environment at least be familiar, because the noise maker will be new enough.
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• Reinforcing skills – Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can always reward, praise and love the heck out of them when they sit, stay, lay down and shake your hand appropriately. ‘Leave it’ was the one we worked on most pre-baby and it has served us well so far, particularly in the distinguishing of dog toy v. human toy – there really isn’t much of a difference when you think about it. And ‘lay down’ is always helpful for the non-dog-loving baby visitors. Probably could’ve worked on that one a little more, along with ‘stop jumping, you’re a dog, not a jack rabbit’ and ‘shhhh no barking, no ones gonna like you.’
• Changing routines – We aren’t ones for keeping to very strict routines… Bad habits, oh yes!, but productive beneficial routines, hardly. We did switch the pups feeding schedule from evening to morning since I’m now home with her all day to let her out! We made the transition slowly and eventually succesfully. Her walking schedule is erratic at best, so nothing needed to be changed there. It’s still erratic at best. But thinking ahead to what our days would entail post-birth and trying to switch up the routines as early as possible made life easier on everyone involved. Here is my dog, whose old routine centered around glaring and guilt tripping until she got her walk. Her new routine is centered around glaring and guilt tripping until she gets her walk. We did not need to heed this advice.
• Setting boundaries – This was an easy one because we blatantly don’t have any boundaries. Woops. Shrug. Our four legged girl rules the roost over here and is allowed on the furniture and on our bed and in every room. The only place she doesn’t go is in the basement and that’s because she doesn’t want to… Not at all because we told her no… We hope to excel, instead, at human parenting… *crickets* c’est la vie. Anyway, pre-baby would have been the time to enforce the boundaries if we had some or wanted to create any… I personally like that my dog can cuddle up next to me on the couch and don’t mind if she’s spending her day up on my bed. It’s comfy. I want to spend my days there too. We considered the idea of the nursery being a doggy-free zone, but the cuteness of our dog laying by the baby’s crib was just too sweet to pass up. And if you’ve ever been to our house, you know we don’t quite care about the dog hair *more crickets* but if I did have any qualms about where my dog was allowed, I would have worked on them early.
• Reclaiming sleep spaces – We gave this a valiant effort. Truly. But remember how I said we don’t have any boundaries. Our dog was crate trained as a puppy and as she wiggled her way into our hearts, she also crept her way riiiight into our bed. When the baby news hit, we knew we wanted to transition her back to sleeping in her crate.  The baby would be in our room for the first few months and having the extra nuisance and commotion of a dog in the bed didn’t seem right. We started out slowly, a few nights here and there and eventually got to a point where she wouldn’t even put up a stink.  We say crate and she goes right in – that’s the success portion.  The failure part is that now that we have adjusted to having the baby in the room and mom’s recovered from birthing the human child, having the dog in the bed seems more of a comfort than nuisance and I, for one, have welcomed her back into the bed.  I’ll be honest, I also appreciate her adorable concern when the baby cries in the middle of the night and her company as she lays awake with me, inching her head closer and closer while I feed the baby. So reclaim away and make your sleeping space yours again if you think it best… I did!! And then I didn’t…
• Plan the meet and greet – The first introduction was while the baby was in the hospital. The hubby brought home the baby’s first hat and blanket and let the dog sniff away. Supposedly, she delicately grabbed the hat with her teeth and brought it over to her favorite piece of floor and laid down with it. Melt my heart why dontcha. We also planned to introduce outside. When we brought the baby home, we let the dog out to use the restroom first and foremost, then she greeted me by the car after a whopping full week in the hospital – I so missed my girl! And last but not least we placed the baby carrier on the ground and let her sniff sniff sniff while dad held her collar. And then when he wasn’t holding her she did the same. We spent a decent amount of time outside with her before we brought the whole family into the house and let her sniff some more on her own turf. She was such a good girl. I highly recommend bringing the hospital clothes home. And the outside meet and greet. 

and lastly…

• Avoiding this scenario – If the baby’s cord falls off while you are in the middle of something (feeding, for example), my recommendation is not to place it for even a brief moment within the dog’s reach, (on the coffee table, for example).  It will become a most delicious (read: disgusting) dog treat.

Yeah, I’m really gonna leave you with that. Woof.