When you notice your dog has a cough, replace its collar with a harness and make the environment warm.
If your dog is between 30 pounds to 50 pounds, you can give it honey.
Over-the-counter suppressants for children can also help to comfort your dog. Give your dog lots of water and place it on good nutrition.
There’s no way that you’d risk your child’s safety for your pet’s companionship, so you want to make sure you have an obedient pet right from the time of pregnancy.
You should follow our guidelines to get the most desirable outcome with your pet when you bring home your baby.
Prepare The Pet for Your Baby’s Arrival
Providing a safe environment for your baby requires careful preparations.
Right from the time of your pregnancy, make your pet. Here are things we recommend:
Step 1
Help your pet to socialize with other pets, children, and babies.
Prolonged stay indoors can make your pet find it harder to accept others and socialize properly.
You can take your pet to the park or go out for a walk and make it meet with others.
Step 2
Bring new things gradually into your home to make your pet used to seeing new things around.
This way it will be less surprising to see your baby when it eventually comes.
Step 3
Make your pet have encounters with babies.
This step can give important insight into what to expect from your pet around your baby.
You may invite friends with babies and children, and observe your pet’s reaction when the baby cries or got close to your pet.
See how your pet handles these situations to know the decisions you’ll take regarding it.
Step 4
Create new commands that can be useful for future interactions around your baby.
Enforce the new commands with treats and toys, then gradually hold them back as the pets understand and absorb the orders.
Step 5
Pets become stressed when changes occur in their environment.
You should help your pet prepare for those changes in advance and before your delivery.
When Baby Arrives
1. Properly introduce your baby to your pet. Make your pet’s first impressions of your baby a pleasant one.
2. Never leave your baby unsupervised around your pet. It doesn’t matter how much trust you have in your pet.
3. Don’t Abandon your pet. Avoid situations where your pet sees your baby as a new competition.
4. An effective way to make your pet associate a pleasant feeling with your baby is playing with them both while your baby is awake and ignoring your pet while the baby is asleep or away.
This will give the impression that once the baby is absent, the fun ends. Your pet would see the baby as its ticket to having fun with you and less as a competition.
5. Help your pet get used to baby cries if you notice the cry causes it to feel stressed by giving it treats when the baby cries to relate the cry to a pleasant feeling.
Finally, you may also consider an obedience training school for your dog before or after your baby arrives.
