Teasing or slapping the dog

We have a large yellow lab and a little shih tzu (quite the pair) and the boys up until now have usually left them alone. The dogs are not all that "friendly" to the boys, meaning they don't follow the boys around licking them and wanting to play; they don't like to be petted by the boys or anything really. Well, now the boys have taken to teasing the dogs with their (boys) toys and even taking it further and hitting the dogs with their toys. They will chase the dogs around with their ride-on tonka trucks, pushing them after the dogs until them clip them and chase them with that ball popper thing. They will slap the dogs with their hands or toys. I'm just at a loss of what to do because it doesn't matter how I get after them they think it's the funniest damn thing ... excuse my language. I've even heard the dogs snarl a few times .....

Has anyone gone through this? How do I teach them to be nice?? At this point they are not getting it! They are times when the boys are nice to the dogs and will pet them but then almost immediately start slapping them. Frustrating.

Now I do have to say that the boys have seen us swat the dogs for barking and the lab gets up on counters if food has been left out and eats it. So I know they've seen us scold the dog and I'm afraid that they've started thinking that's okay ... not that it happens alll the time ... but they have seen us get after the dogs.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

 

Yes we had a small moment where they kids were mean to the animals. It is so important to restrict access from them while they're being mean, it can make the dogs uneasy, and a dog is a dog afterall. Even the most patient dog can snap and yell (snarl, snap, even bite), just like the most patient parent can snap (yell or worse).

We restricted access for the dogs and the kids, gave TOs, praised the dogs when the dogs were good around the kids, praised the kids when the dogs were around and they were acting nicely. It took some time, but the kids stopped tormenting the animals after a few months and now want to pet nicely, give them treats, want to feed the cats and dogs.

And you HAVE to stop swatting the dogs. The kids are 100% picking up the attitude that it's okay to hit when you don't like a behavior. We had to change the way that we pet the dogs, sometimes we would do a pat-pat-pat, and the kids were picking that up as a BAM-BAM-BAM.

 

I agree with Bex. One of the things DH and I both did (and continue to do) is to show the kids how to be nice to our cats. We show them how to pet and play with the cats nicely. When we have to discipline the cats, it's usually with a no-no and removing them from the situation. I did not want the kids to see us swat or yell at the cats, because we don't want the kids to pick that up. I found being consistent helped a lot and also having to separate the kids from the animals from time to time helped. Good luck!

 

I too agree with Bex. I would add a couple of things: make certain that the dogs have a safe zone that the kids do not have access to, so that the dogs can get away from the lo's when it gets to be too much for them. In addition, we are trying to teach our dog to "kiss" (lick) the kids instead of snapping when they are being too rough as a sign that it is getting out of hand. (I would not recommend this for everyone. You have to know your dogs and whether you would trust them and their mouths to be anywhere near your kids.) And of course you know that you have to watch all the interactions constantly to make certain that even the gentle play will not set the dogs off and trigger a snap. The only other thing I can thing of is to teach the kids how to play with the dogs. My sister's dogs love playing fetch with a tennis ball. It doesn't work for my dog (who could not care less about fetching anything) but that usually lets the lo's and the dogs interact and builds up a friendly, more tolerant and trusting atmosphere between the dogs and the kids so that when accidents happen (an inadvertent step on a tail or a pet that is too rough, for example) the bond is there. GL!

 

My boys LOOOOVE our dog, but the feeling is not exactly mutual. She doesn't snap at them, but she does not like the attention. One of the best things we did is to teach them "nice". So if they hit her, we take their hands and stroke them along her fur and say "touch her nice". Now 99% of the time when they interact with her, they stroke her and say "niiiiice". We're also pretty careful about how *we* touch the dog too, and try to model gentle patting. If they throw toys at her, or hit her with a toy, it's an immediate "NO" and a toy-time-out.

I also totally agree with giving the dogs space to get away from the toddlers. Our dog can go into the den, the laundry room, or upstairs for some "alone time". This also helps when the boys are trying to feed her from their highchairs and we need to remove temptation.