Preparing Your Dog for the New Baby

You’re expecting your first baby – how wonderful! There are so many things to start thinking about and planning for, including preparing your dog for all the changes that will occur when you bring the baby home. The best time to start training your pet for this new lifestyle is today. Using the positive reinforcement clicker training method will reinforce the strong positive bond between you and your dog and make the transition much happier for you and your dog.

Obedience Training
This is the time to make sure your dog has been obedience trained to respond to your commands: sit, stay, come, down. Clicker training is one of the most successful methods for obedience training, and once you’ve mastered the simple clicker technique, you’ll be able to teach your dog to do these basic commands. Once you’ve fine-tuned these skills, you can clicker train your dog to walk with a leash.

Crate Training
Make sure your dog has a safe place to go, a place just for him when he needs to get away from all the baby activity or for you to put him when he needs to be out of the activity for a few hours. Clicker train your dog to go to the crate, where his bed, food, water, and toys are kept, and he’ll be much happier when you need him to stay there for a while.

Behavior Training
With all the attention shifted to the new baby and all the new smells and noises, your dog may feel threatened or overwhelmed. As early as possible, start clicker training to address issues such as barking, growling, and other aggressive behaviors; and chewing, jumping up on people or furniture, and other destructive behaviors.

Environment Training
All the noise and commotion may make your dog skittish, aggressive, or withdrawn. You can help him learn to stay calm by introducing him to similar environments. Clicker train your dog to lie down and be calm when children approach her. Take your dog to visit friends with young children and clicker train him to learn to stay calm with all the strange noises and smells. Introduce these for short periods and increase the time as he becomes more comfortable.

You’ll find a number of blog posts on this site with information about clicker training techniques and tips. Clicker train your dog early, reinforce the training often, and make him feel loved and important. You’ll be able to enjoy this exciting time of your life with your new baby and your happy, well behaved dog.

911 Dog Hero

She may be retired now, but Red was one of the four-legged heroes in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.

Red was among hundreds of other dogs who worked in New York and Washington, D.C. after the attacks, according to the video below from Reuters. She searched through the rubble at the Pentagon in 12-hour shifts in the hot sun, helping to recover dozens of bodies over several weeks.

Now 12-years-old and retired, the Labrador occasionally tags along on search missions. She "still has the same love of the search," according to the video report.

Her trainer, Heather Roche, said "I never thought she would be a successful search dog," she told Reuters. But no matter what I asked her to do ... she did it every single time and she did it perfectly," Roche added.

There are organizations that work to train dogs, such as the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation,which helps train dogs mostly from shelter s to save human lives during disaster.

Listen carefully towards the end of the video...hear the Clicker?

Thank you to Red and Heather!

The Clicker Company

Dog Vs Sheep Clicker Trick Showdown

LOVE this great show of clicker training with different animals!