Dogs need to know every person in the family, especially the children. Start as soon as you get your puppy. Let every member of the immediate family take it in turns to feed the puppy. Even very young children under supervision, can put the bowl on the floor. This will get puppy used to seeing children around the food bowl.

Older children must always be supervised whilst feeding the puppy.
They should never be left unattended. On your once a week health and grooming check, get the children involved. Teach them how to check and groom the puppy. This again gets puppy used to being handled by children, but they must be supervised.

Training - everyone in the family needs to use the same commands. Too many different commands will most certainly confuse the puppy.

If you enrol at a Dog Training School, which I strongly advise you to do, then all the family needs to attend to see how the puppy is trained. You do not need to all go at the same time, but children do need to learn to respect dogs and training schools can do this.

As with the keeping of all animals there are certain rules that need to be adhered to.

1. Do not allow anyone who visits you, to treat your puppy anything other than kindly- that includes other members of the family, including the children.
   
   
2. Never allow anyone to tease your puppy it may be fun now, but not when they get older and people get bitten through bad puppy management.
   
   
3. Let the puppy sleep or rest quietly. He is not a toy to be played with whenever you decide, or when the children want something to drag around or dress up!
   
   
4. Avoid play fighting where the puppy is encouraged to show aggression. Here again the puppy knows no boundaries and when he goes too far he will be smacked for biting too hard and then when puppy gets older and his bite harder - I need say no more.

Children can be the problem with rough play they find it highly amusing - when puppy starts grabbing and hanging on they squeal louder, puppy bites and growls louder - problems already.

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Rules have to be kept. When you get your puppy, make sure the ground rules are in place. Make sure every member of the family, including the children understand them

Decide where the pup is to sleep - is he allowed upstairs, is he allowed on the furniture, is he allowed full run of the house while you pop out? Involve everyone and then owning your puppy should be fun for all of the family. @ Janet Wesley

If you have any problems, email us for advice. Training@worldofdogs.cc