People are always saying that small dogs and small children don't mix. I think that depends a lot on the dogs and the children. We currently have 3 small dogs. They love small children. Our grand daughter (baby G) is currently living with us (her parents too..) and she just loves the dogs. She's two and a half right now, but she spent time up here a few times over the last 2 years so we have had the chance to see them react to her at different ages.
They adore her. We never had any qualms about leaving her alone with the pommies.
The youngest one, Gobo, is 3 and will occasionally want to play "rough" which pretty much means she'll wind up getting licked to death. He was born with several birth defects, the most noticeable one being that he doesn't have the traditional pommie tail. Oddly, this seems to allow him better balance on 2 legs and he will often stand up and walk around to beg for attention. He also has some problems with is "boy bits" which we have to keep an eye on. They tried repairing some of it in surgery, but it didn't work because there were even more things wrong then we'd realized. But he is doing well now. Just have to keep an eye on things. This weekend he's apparently been bitten by something and managed to chew a large raw spot on his back, so he's been a bit needy this weekend while I'm trying to keep him from making things worse. That all seems to be settling down now though, and as long as I can keep him away from the sore, he should be ok and start healing soon.
Gir is a little older and a little more stand off-ish.. she's also the smallest of the dogs and has never really liked the hubbub. But she will sit and be petted and if the others start to get too excited, she just leaves. We got her from the same breeder we got Gobo from, though she is not from the same lines. She'd been brought up here to add to the breeding stock then, once she got here, it was discovered that she had bad knees (which you want to breed out, not in..) and was underweight, so she couldn't be used for breeding. So we got called to see if we would take her or knew of anyone who would and she joined our little gang. Turned out she also had 4 extra teeth in her mouth and a bunch of other dental problems. She wound up having to have 16 teeth pulled.. Sadly, her teeth are still bad and we might have to have more pulled. She is a total joy, though. She gets so excited to see us, she spins and dances around the floor.
Willow was the only one we were ever really concerned with. She's a 9 year old Jack Russell. Very dominant personality, very protective. She was a little snappy when we first got her a few years ago. (All of our dogs have basically been rescues of one sort or another.) And she still has her moments. (For instance, she really hates the oven. We have no idea why, but she will attack the couch or a toy or something or run around barking at it when we open the oven. We really don't understand this, but are trying to work with her on this.) We got her from a friend of a friend. They were headed off to college and her parents had told her to find a new home for the dog or they were going to shoot her, because they wanted a rottweiler. I really hope they didn't get such a big, powerful dog.. We've been told that Willow is actually pretty mellow for her breed, but there is no number of pommies that can prepare you for a JRT, even a "mellow" one..
So we were a little worried at first about how she would react to baby G.
Willow has been wonderful with her. We were rather surprised at how quickly she took to her. Willow has always been very protective of "her" girls (B2 and M) and it seems baby G is now in that fold. If Gobo gets "rowdy", Willow will come stand between and push Gobo away. If she thinks anyone is going to hurt G, she does the same thing. There's only been one incident where G was tugging on Willow's ear while she was trying to eat. Willow didn't like that and let G know. No skin was broken, Willow knows she gets in BIG trouble over that, but she will bare her teeth and can be very scary looking. They never get left alone, either way, but it is also good for G to learn there are limits and that you should be nice to animals.
I'm really sad that I can't include one other dog on this list. The first dog we got as a family, Pepe, passed away very suddenly in March, so she is no longer with us to be a part of this. However, she was such a big part of our family, and my healing process in coming to terms with infertility, that I might just have to make another post about her later.
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