Kingdom of Pets

Posted by Marcia
Apr 30, 2009

I babysit for my two grandchildren at my son's home. Their English bulldog, named Bogie has been great with the babies until recently. The children are 13 months and 10 months. Bogie has always stolen their toys whenever they are left where he could grab them. He takes off through the house and hides under a crib to chew on them. If I attempt to remove the toy from his mouth we get into a tug of war (my back can't handle it anymore) or he just takes off for other parts of the house. Now the children are out and about and will occasionally "feed toys to him". Most of the time he takes them very gently but on other occassions he jumps at them, knocks them over and scares them. He really has been good with the babies, but at almost 3 years old he seems to be getting a little more aggressive and he could very well hurt them my mistake.

Lately it really seems like he goes out of his way to find a toy to grab and then since I gave up chasing after him, he returns to find me and tease me with it. He'll drop it (while i ignore him) then as soon as I attempt to retrieve the toy he grabs it and takes off. Now he grabs toys for the babies' hands and knocks them down. HELP !!!! We love our grandchildren and don't want them hurt. We love our dog toooooo !!!

Please help us help Bogie behave.

Marcia

Posted by KOPsarah
May 3, 2009

Hi marcia, thanks for your post
I think there are a number of things we can do to help the situation. First of all Bogie needs to be taught drop. The full instructions for this are in your dog training secrets manual. That way as soon as your dog has a toy he will sit and drop it in order to get a treat. Once he is reliably dropping the toys you can quickly replace it with one of his own toys. Also every time he goes to take one of the children's toys give a "no" or "aghhh no" command so he knows not to do it. Again treat him when he obeys and offer him one of his toys. As the children become old enough to understand make sure they know not to give him their toys only his toys as well.

It may also help him if he knows for sure which toys are his. Try keeping his toys in a box in a place away from the children or rubbing them all with a little of something like yeast spread or meat so that he can smell which toys are his. Also make sure he has a wide variety of toys and rotate them so he has two or three at a time and then different ones later.

Also it is very important that everyone keeps up there alpha training with the dog. If the dog accepts that it is at the bottom of the pack it will know it cannot take anything which is not his and that it must hand over anything it has or come straight away when told.

Hope this helps, let me know how you all get on

grabbing babies' toys