retardedchristianknight
New member
@esther1977 Thank you for this! I think I really need to work on how much I'm setting him up for success, when I posted this I think I had set us all up for frustration :-/
ACD puppy horrible around children
- Thread starter retardedchristianknight
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davetownsend
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@retardedchristianknight We had a hard time with our ACD and kid too. He was 7yo when we got our pup. It was bad until the pup was about 9 months and she still gets a little "herd-y" when he runs around. The kid learned to be more assertive and we got her to stop nipping.
@retardedchristianknight Number 1 thing you have to do is management: basically make it impossible for him to access children unless you are there to make sure he's only practicing behaviors that you like around them.
That will almost always mean using baby gates or a crate to separate him from your kids at home, and keeping him on leash when he does have access to them. You must continually practice and reinforce (with treats!) good behavior.
This also means that you have to notice when he's off-leash around kids, and immediately leash him.
You may also need to train your children, but I have zero tips on that
Our girl was freaking terrible with kids because we don't have any. Luckily, we have friends who have dogs+kids, whose kids know how to behave around dogs, and we practiced many calm greetings with those kids to help her learn how to behave and that kids aren't scary. So now she's a bit better, though still gets unreasonably excited to see tiny humans out in the wild sometimes.
That will almost always mean using baby gates or a crate to separate him from your kids at home, and keeping him on leash when he does have access to them. You must continually practice and reinforce (with treats!) good behavior.
This also means that you have to notice when he's off-leash around kids, and immediately leash him.
You may also need to train your children, but I have zero tips on that
Our girl was freaking terrible with kids because we don't have any. Luckily, we have friends who have dogs+kids, whose kids know how to behave around dogs, and we practiced many calm greetings with those kids to help her learn how to behave and that kids aren't scary. So now she's a bit better, though still gets unreasonably excited to see tiny humans out in the wild sometimes.retardedchristianknight
New member
@linhmaiha Training the kid is definitely another hard aspect! Every day I tell her to stop flailing around and screaming like a wild banshee when the dog is around but it's almost unstoppable haha. I think being more adamant about leashing and gating is definitely good advice, thank you!!
@retardedchristianknight Work on "No" and the "Leave It!" command. I have a corgi/ACD mix that is also really bad with kids. We started off with "leave it" in the kitchen with food, then I got the Outward Hound Tail Teaser toy. It's like a cat wand for dogs, she'll be really worked up chasing it and when I say "leave it" she'll break off mid chase.