Prior to Jelly Bean’s birth, I worried (panicked) about having a baby around our (spoiled indoor) dogs. Our fur babies had always been near and dear to our hearts, but I knew my human baby would take precedence. I read articles on preparing dogs for babies and made mental plans of playing crying sounds for the dogs to acclimate to the noise, allowing them to lay in her room or sniff around her toys without destroying anything, and bringing home Jelly Bean’s beanie for them to smell before introducing the tiny sister replacing them in my parenting eyes. … Those things didn’t happen. Even after having a dream that my newborn was the object of a fight between Rillo and Snoop, I still didn’t prep my fur babies. I guess the dream-induced sight of my dogs gleefully tossing around my infant wasn’t enough to get my pregnant butt up off my cloud-of-a couch and introduce my dogs to baby toys.
Even without prepping my dogs, they have been wonderful! Not only have they been gentle and loving, but Jelly Bean LOVES them. Now that she is scooting around, she loves to crawl all over Rillo and play peek-a-boo out the back door with Snoop. We always watch carefully to make sure that when Rillo is dancing and hopping with excitement that she doesn’t get trapped under paw, or if Snoop is doing the death roll on a bug that Ellie doesn’t try to grab it from him, but we haven’t had any issues with the dogs snapping at her or hurting her. In fact, the maddest Jelly Bean has gotten at the dogs was when Snoop gave her three too many kisses, and she had had enough furry brother love.
Aside from the too-many-kisses cry, Ellie loves her dogs. The first time she full on chuckled was when Rillo shook his bath water off all over her. That laugh was so great that we kept hosing down Rillo so he would shake dirty dog water all over our child sitting in her Jenny Jump Up (yes, we are great parents). They crawl around together, play fetch together, and watch the neighborhood together. Our fur babies do occasionally get a little jealous of all the attention that has shifted to Ellie, but a good belly scratching reminds them how much we love them. I have heard horror stories about dogs and babies, so we stay vigilant. But so far, they are the three amigos!
Molly's Corner 