Jealousy

We had my sister over at the weekend with her 4 month old baby. Oscar seemed so jealous, hes around 15 months old and it was his first encounter with a baby especially in our house.

He seemed like a crazy dog and i had to be on top if him every move he was really giddy and sat crying when me or my girlfriend had hold of the baby.

Iv got to admit hes a really good dog and rarely have issues with him but i need to do my best to stop this.

Has anyone else had this with there staffys?

Is Oscar usually the centre of attention when visitors come? Does he attention seek at all in general, pushing affection onto people etc? Babies are WEIRD to dogs; new smells, sounds etc.

I know we are all to blame in the family as he has been completly tret like a baby (which has made him so soft) i now know that has led to this problem.

It might be because its a new thing to him iv always tried to introduce him to every possible situation but obviously cant magic a baby out of nowhere lol.

Hopefully with persistance he will improve

Totally understand, Biscuit is yet to meet a baby and my sister is due to give birth in July, but I can't find a baby to practise on  so we'll just have to make do when Willow gets here!! If the little one is going to be visiting a lot, i'd work on his attention seeking behaviours; be consistent and ignore all attempts to attention seek when the baby isn't there, give attention of course, but only when invited by you. Start today and continue as you mean to go on, but you need to be careful about only reprimanding or ignoring him when the baby is there, as that is what will cause a negative association and jealousy problems. He'll be fine! He's not a baby

Haha definatly not a baby but its so hard to not make such a fuss of him.

Certainly needs sone work

Great advice from Rachel When my brother brought his baby home, my parents Staff was very jealous! If anyone picked the baby up he would whine and bark and jump around, if the baby cried, he would cry. Baby is now 2 and they get along perfectly. It just took some time for him to adjust to the new member of the family and not being centre of attention

We never really had the problem but to try and avoid it happening we used to try to involve the dog with the Baby.

Sounds stupid I know but it was things like:- When we went to change the Baby we used to call the dog to come with us, talking to the Dog and explaining what we were doing etc. When doing Baby's bottles in Kitchen, call Dog, talking to him like a nut job, and he gets a treat.

Just seemed to make him feel "involved" somehow. Or maybe I am just a fruitcake lol.

Nah your not a fruitcake Tony... They are definitely smarter than we give credit for... I think they just play us humans most of the time  

Tell me about it! Still can't believe that they know when to "act" dumb when it's to their advantage. Incredible.

Thanks for the responses. Urs made me laugh tony ur definatly not a fruitcake on ur own anyway i let mine know when im going out n 'wont be long' like he knows exactly what im talking about...

Lol Tony! That's what I do when I have hand rear pups or kittens here! Biscuit comes over for feeding/toileting time and sits and watches what's going on she likes to be involved and it keeps her from getting stressed about the new arrival! Great advice