New puppy and 7 month old daughter

[ewiley]

Does anyone have ideas on how to get my new puppy and the baby used to each other? The puppy is 6wks old and very sweet, quite the cuddler, but the baby is so excited she flaps her arms around and ends up smacking his face or poking him in the eye! Then he thinks she wants to play so he nibbles on her fingers, toes, whatever he can. He hasn't hurt her yet but I'm not sure if I should just let it go, she doesn't seem to mind...stop her arm waving, I don't want him to bite her too hard...She does bend over and give him kisses, SOOOOO sweet, I rarely even get those, to which he kisses her back, but I'm not sure what to do about the arm waving, poking, nibbling aspect. So confused! I want to make sure I start their relationship off right and any help/advice would be much appreciated. I don't want either to end up disliking the other in the months/years to come.

 

[Just-A-Clown]

6 weeks old is such a young puppy. I don't know if there is a right a wrong way here. I myself would just closely supervise the time they are together. I think its good the puppy is exposed to the arm flapping of children, so the pup gets use to that kind of thing. But I would just be careful so that the baby doesn't hurt the pup, and the pup doesn't hurt the baby. As you know, a 6 week old pup may want to bite at your skinkid in a playful manner, especially being removed from Mom so young. Mom usually will teach the pups some bite inhibition, at this young age you will have to be teaching it now. We were very deligent with this on our pup since we got him at 8 days old, no litter mates or Mom to teach him, just us. So you can influence that behavior easily.

We also found that as our pup grew by 8 or 9 weeks he played with children very well, seemed to know that he couldn't be rough with them. Now these were neighborhood children and not our own, so his exposure was somewhat limited. I don't think we taught him this, just his make up. Maybe your pup too will be good with kids. One thing for sure, they will become best buddies over time.