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Malinois prepping

Hello! I am 19 weeks pregnant with first baby and i have a female Malinois. She is gonna be 3 now in April. She is a very anxious and obsessive dog. We have worked with dog trainers since she is a puppy. I wouldn’t say she is aggressive but she has had some aggressive behaviour previously. And she is weary of strangers coming in the house. She is really friendly and playful with some very few dogs since the first sec, but in general she doesn’t like dogs getting close to her and will mark them off and even get into fights in general with other dogs. In general she is quite unpredictable. Now that i will have a baby im really worried on how it will be with her. Any tips on how to best prepare her on whats to come? Thank you!🙏🏻

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I definitely have suggestions!! I don’t have a ton of hands right now so I’m going to link you to an amazing starter resource to skim through & check out! And I will be back with a more thoughtful response!! https://www.instagram.com/dogmeets_baby?igsh=cDlkbWtrMm1nMHB1

I will defenetly check is out! Thank you so much!🙏🏻

If really reccomend getting a behaviourist involved when baby is here. Our dog (not same breed but rescue and sounds VERY similar to yours behaviour wise). We really struggled when baby first came. He was extremely protective (tried to bite a few family members that went to pick up baby!). Was very stressed when baby cried etc. through the rescue charity we saw a behaviourist who was brilliant. (Not cheap) but after an about 5 sessions we had a different dog. 3 years later he is fab (still hates most people and dogs 😂) but he is great with toddler and very well adjusted in the home to all the noise and drama that a toddler boy brings to the table!

@Naomi i cant even imagine how our Mali will be with the baby 🙈. I do want to start preparing since now, for her not to be so obsessive with toys for example i think its the first step. I bought also a big playpen where i dont want the dogs to come in, like a safe space for the baby. Did your dog ever showed any lind of aggressiveness towards the baby? I also worry abut the baby not knwing how to give space to the dogs and them getting overwhelmed and biting the baby 🫠 I think i just keep playing in my mind the worst possible scenarios 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

When baby was tiny - no aggression at all it was all guarding issues but when baby got bigger and was grabby and walking around we’ve had a couple of growls. Our dog can be food possessive (not toy) so we simply feed him outside now. But we are at a point where our son can feed him treats and put his dinner down. I still wouldn’t trust him to eat his meal with our son running around. We put stair gates up around the downstairs so that we could keep him out the kitchen when baby was eating as he would take the food (gently) out of baby’s hand 🙈. And also from very early on we kept talking to our son about when dog is on the chair or lying down we don’t touch him. We only touch him when he comes to us for cuddles. It’s worked well, and he is very good with him, we do get the odd occasion when he falls on him etc. dogs reaction has been to run rather than anything else. We don’t take any risks if we have children over for play dates, we close the stair gates so he has a room to himself

But can still see all the kids and they can stroke him over the gate. I wouldn’t let him run around with them. I’d just say be really cautious all the time and take it slowly. When baby comes keep all the rules you have imposed for the dog going. A big no for me with ANY dog is when I see videos of children lying and climbing all over dogs. I just simply wouldn’t not let that happen with the most docile of dogs. Toddlers a disaster zone and unpredictable I just don’t understand how you can trust a dog 💯 with that!

@Naomi thank you so much for sharing! Its great to know someone else’s experience! 🙏🏻