How to Prepare for a New Baby Coming Home with Two Shiba Inus

For this Omaha dog training session we worked with a pair of Shiba Inus Luna (left) and Lily (right), a two-year-old and four-year-old, who needed training to prepare for a new baby coming into the house.

Luna and Lily both greeted me excitedly at the door. When I sat down with the guardians to discuss their main dog behavior concerns, I learned that the two girls didn’t have any rules in place. When dogs don’t have rules in place they can sometimes assume the leadership position in the house. I provided them with a few new rules to incorporate, e.g. sitting before going through the door and no furniture for a minimum of 30 days, to help Luna and Lily adopt a follower’s mindset and look to their guardians for direction and leadership.

Since the guardians are expecting a new baby any day now, their main concern was getting Luna and Lily to be respectful of the new baby’s toys. They wanted to be able to train the girls to drop the baby’s toys if they were to pick them up and to leave certain toys alone. To help them accomplish this I used a positive dog training method to teach Luna and Lily “Drop It,” Take It” and “Leave It.” You can see how I did this in the video below.

Remember, to a dog, drop it and leave it are very different. In the first case, the dog already has possession of an object. In this case we want to have as many repetitions of them dropping a high-value object and receiving a treat reward and then getting that object back. This way when they pick up something they shouldn’t have, when the guardians have to take it away permanently the dogs will happily give up the object.

By then end of the session Luna and Lily were looking to their guardians for direction and adopting a follower’s mindset. To keep up this good behavior the guardians will want to continue to use our Escalating Consequences to disagree with the dogs and use our Petting with a Purpose technique to reward them for good behavior. I wrapped up this session with Luna and Lily’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.