State: California
My wife and I and our room mates have had a house together for a year. We got our pup a few months before we moved in. She’s a giant breed mix, she’s well behaved and super playful. She hasn’t bitten anyone except for playing around for trying to steal a bite of a cheese burger in someone’s hand. We have kids over all the time and she’s super gentle all the way down to new born babies (the softest little kisses on their toes). Things have been great until recently. Our room mates have been playing more rough with her because of her size and energy, which has been increasing her own roughness with us. We ask them not to but we know they still do it. We have been working on training her and she does well but she has lots of inconsistencies between us and our room mates. She recently knocked my niece down on accident trying to jump up and give her kisses (no injuries, our neice laughed) which she’s never done before, so we take great care not to leave them together unsupervised since she weighs more than the little girl does.
About three months ago our room mate kind of strong armed us until allowing his girlfriend to move in, first by pulling the pitty card, then by getting the OK from everyone else, our landlord and then my wife and I last. We agreed, reluctantly, because we knew it would be a shit show if we didn’t. Shortly after, they surprised us by having her kid over for visitation, without notifying anyone except for one of us by text message last minute, leaving them home alone with our dog and the kid who’s 5. We again left it alone to avoid problems, no problems with our dog, things have been fine. Then last week our new room mate decided to babysit a kid for someone and have them over, again unannounced. We were home, but I had to work on a vehicle and wife had some work from home stuff to do. The dog has been fine with kids, but our new roomie knows she’s big and plays rough. Still, she decided to walk outside to hang with everyone else and left the kid alone in the house with a sandwich in his hand and with my dog in the house. Naturally my one year old pup wanted the sandwich and saw an opening and nipped at the sandwich. Didn’t hurt the kid at all, but scared him and he screamed. My wife heard it and came out to the kitchen just in time to see the new room mate with her hand in the air screaming she was gonna beat the shit out of our dog. Naturally we are upset by this. We worked it out kind of, we installed a pet gate to keep our dog out of the back room where the kid usually is. Then today, then have another visitation, 5 days after the last incident. They prop the dog gate open, leave the kid alone with the dog with food, and walk away. Like the didn’t learn their lesson last week, we implemented preventative measures to avoid a problem, and they purposely bypass them for whatever stupid reason. Nothing happened, but I need to figure out how to protect us and our dog for their stupid ignorance. We are working with a licensed dog trainer, and we paid for the gate to keep her separate from the kid. We have insurance that will cover us financially, but at what point is it their own liability and not ours? The dog is doing what she’s always done, exhibiting well known behavior in the house she lives in, and all of the sudden new kids are visiting and being left alone with her with food in their hands and our preventative measures are purposely being bypassed. Any advice would be much appreciated, we love our dog and cannot sit here and wait for them and their irresponsible behavior to have her taken from us and put down.
I cannot stress enough, this dog is not mean, she wants people food and she’s over 100 pounds and still a pup so she has lots of energy, no aggression other than normal being playful.
Situation Involving Dog, Room Mates, Kids
