[elstoner]

Here's the sitch ... We adopted a hound mix six months ago. Our 6-year-old lab mix was having a hard time dealing with the fact that our kitty was gone, and we'd just found out that our 6-year-old son was allergic to cats. Plus, that same child was having issues of his own and we thought getting another dog would help both of them. We have four children in all. Presently they are 7, 6, 21 months and 9.5 months. Our newest addition (the puppy) is 7.5 months and we've had her for nearly six months now.

The puppy is extremely smart and knows about a dozen different commands. And although she and our older dog have had their issues, they only "fight" outside ... most of it is just playing but when the puppy gets too rough, our older dog lets her know. But the biggest problem is that, today, she actually started to growl at the baby. This is something she's never done with any of the kids! I immediately put her in her kennel, but since we've never had to deal with this before I'm not sure if I did the right thing or if there's another way it should be handled if it happens again? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[DaGracer]

You are definitely on track by seeking help. Nipping this in the bud now will help to prevent it in the future.

Can you recall what happened immediately before the puppy growled at the baby? Was the baby reaching for the puppy? Was the baby making loud excited noises? Was the baby crying? How has your puppy reacted toward the baby in all other instances prior to the growling incident. Do you recall what your puppy's body posture was like?

Dogs learn about each other from body postures, sniffing each other, and level of excitement. If a dog is uncomfortable and feels threatened in any way, he may growl. Some dogs don't get along with children because they are smaller and give off signals to the dog (such as being frightened or being pushy) that makes the dog feel uncomfortable.

The first step is to try to remember what happened immediately before the puppy growled and try to prevent that from happening again. Also, reward your puppy with praise, treats, or playtime whenever she is being good around the baby. If the dog growls, you can immediately put the dog in time out (in a separate room with the door shut where there are no other people or animals) but for no longer than 30 seconds. Make sure you take the dog away from the child and not the child away from the dog. Otherwise, your puppy will think "if I growl, the threat goes away, yay!" (unless you think the issue is escalating and you have to remove the child for safety, of course.)
If you keep your puppy in a kennel while you are away or at night, I wouldn't put her in it as punishment. You don't want your puppy to associate "her place" with punishment.

Hope this makes sense and helps a little bit!

[Miss Lily Bug]

I agree, never punish your dog by putting her in her crate. The crate to her is her den, her home, her safehaven. When you punish her, she will start to correlate the two, and you will end up with more problems. Everything else is right on. I agree, there was something that happened to set the dog off to growl. If you figure out what that was, you can solve the problem.

My only other tid bit would be on the punishment aspect. If you catch the dog in the act and say "no" the dog will correlate this with his action. If you do this after the fact, they will have no idea what you are punishing them for. For example, you caught the dog stomping on your flowers. You called the dog to you, and then said "no, bad boy"- Your dog is going to think he was a bad boy for coming to you. Then he won't want to come to you again because he correlates coming to you with punishment.

I hope that made sense, and I hope I helped!