Dutch Shepherd Forum

My sister and her 2 young children are coming to visit next month. I am very excited but it has got me thinking about the dogs. We live in a reasonable sized but not very big apartment and usually the dogs hang out wherever I am. So my dillema is that when Diesel was first exposed to children, he was still a puppy. The little girl he saw screamed at him and he was terrified. Diesel has seen my nephew once and he barked at him, I quickly corrected him but Diesel was uneasy the whole time.
We see children often when we go for walks and he is great, he lets them pat him and he is always calm. I worry that it will be different inside the house.
Halo will be fine I am certain. Although I worry that the dogs may knock over the kids because they are not used to being careful inside the house.
I am sure it will be a matter of correcting/calming as we go but I wonder if anyone has any advice about how to introduce dogs to kids?

My first thought on the intro's would be to introduce the kids to the dogs outside, seeing as you say they are good outside when seeing kids. Then when you go inside with them all, (kids first, dogs last of course) you will have a head start with them getting along.

We're working on this issue (with people generally, not just kids) with Zane right now and the initial exercise our trainer recommended was to have him wear his leash and harness in the house and practice relaxing on the floor while leashed (getting petted, whatever helps him to relax). Once that's set, add people who live in the house walking around while the dog stays relaxed on the floor. Then you can add guests and the dog should stay calm on the floor while guests walk around. That way you'll also have him under control in case he does get freaked out by the kids.

LOTS of great treats! Maybe a dragline inside. You didn't mention how old the kids are, but make sure they're not doing wrong things, for their part, and of course, you won't leave them unsupervised with the kids...

Do you guys have some kind of "rug" or "go to place" cue? If not, I'd work on that before they come (assuming they have doggie rugs to lie on) so you can have them chill on their rugs/mats when you're all hanging out in the evenings, etc.