I’ve got a 7 year old bulldog that used to be moderately well trained. We’ve got a 21 month old daughter, and the dog has gotten pretty bad since she became mobile. He’s constantly stealing food from her and nipping at my wife when she tries to push him away. He no longer listens to my wife, and only grudgingly obeys me.
I’m still the alpha male, but my wife never was very good at maintaing her place in the pack. The dog doesn’t know his place in the pack anymore, and he’s getting grumpy in his old age. I’m afraid he might nip at my daughter.
How do I get the dog to realize he’s between my daughter and the @#$%^&* cats in the pack hierarchy?
Neuter him. That will calm him down. If he’s already been snipped then leave him outside in a fenced in area and don’t let him back in the house. Either way he’ll get the point.
He’s fixed already, so that idea is out. I’m in VT and it’s January, so I can’t leave him outside, as his paws start to get bloody if he’s in the snow for more than 20 minutes or so. (not that he cares - he’s dumb as a post)
Your wife is going to have to re-establish her place first. The kid is a “puppy” to the dog, and puppies are subordinate to other adult dogs in a pack. So first the alpha bitch (who is almost always the only one to breed), has to remind him that she’s the bitch here (pun intended.)
If she can’t figure out how to do that, she needs to take the dog for training. As someone else recently pointed out, it’s not really about training the dog, it’s about training her. So you tell her you want some time alone with the kid, say, Saturdays at 2, and that just happens to be when the local pet store offers obedience training. (Or you go with, but you take the kid to look at the parakeets and fish while Mama and Dog are in class.) Let the professionals show her how to handle the dog, and based on her temperament and the dog’s, they can show her how to keep your child safe around the dog.
I’m no expert, but one thing I’ve read that seems to make sense is that you should NOT give the dog more love and attention after the child is in bed. That creates the impression “if child is gone, my life is better…child=rival” in the dog’s emotional state. Instead, treat the dog well when he’s with the family in the child’s presence.
That’s general advice, not addressing your issue of the dog’s place in the pack, and it sounds like you’ll have to get that under control before my advice can be tried, but it’s something, anyway. Google up some dog message boards and look in their Training and Behavior subforums, perhaps?