Animal Girl Wants to Bear a Child Funny
How to Stop Your Child From Tormenting Your Pet
Teaching children to respect pets' feelings and needs will help establish a safe environment for all.
It was an unfamiliar, acrid stink that tipped me off. Each time I passed within a few feet of our gray tabby cat, Bumpus, the funk shocked my nostrils.
"Cat emitting bad smell," I typed into an internet search bar, realizing quickly that cats, like skunks, can release a powerful odor when they are anxious or frightened. A close look at Bumpus revealed the possible stressor: Someone, it seemed, had clipped the whiskers and eyebrows on the right side of her face. It didn't take much sleuthing to pinpoint my son, then 7, as the perpetrator.
My son couldn't articulate why he did it, though he said he knew he probably shouldn't have. An informal poll of friends and colleagues revealed that he's certainly not the only kid to impose his will on a household pet. They told stories of their young children (or they themselves, back in the day) doing silly, if deranged, things to their pets — putting lipstick on a dog, dressing a beloved chicken in a bikini top, baptizing a hamster after a particularly fiery sermon at church. That made me wonder whether these interactions were as benign as they seemed.
Pets who share our homes are typically "incredibly tolerant" to young children's pokes and prods, said Tania Lanfer, owner and head trainer of Cannon Dog Training in Oakland, Calif., who works extensively with families. But such interactions can also be highly stressful. And since families are spending more time indoors because of the coronavirus, there is more opportunity than ever for children to seek out pets for play. A typically mild-mannered companion might hiss, scratch or bite its owner when pushed to its limit. And even if your pet doesn't react on the outside, being in a state of persistent stress can "diminish their quality of life."
For everyone's safety and well-being, including those of the family pet's, Lanfer recommended that parents and caregivers set firm rules about how kids interact with pets, ensuring that children learn to treat them as creatures with their own preferences, feelings and boundaries.
Understand what makes your pet tick
About two-thirds of American families own a pet — for the vast majority, it's a dog or cat, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Generally, they live in harmony, but not always. About 350,000 Americans visited the emergency room because of a dog bite in 2018. And while people of all ages are bitten, children are "bitten the most severely," said Dr. Ilana Reisner, D.V.M., Ph.D., a board-certified veterinary behaviorist in Wallingford, Pa.
Multiple studies, including one published by Dr. Reisner and her colleagues in the journal Injury Prevention in 2011, have reported that young children are most often bitten in the head and face, and they are most often bitten by dogs they know — in their own homes or in the homes of close friends or family members.
And such bites typically occur when the dog has been provoked. In Dr. Reisner's study, for instance, which tracked 203 children who sought treatment for dog bites at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia between 2006 and 2009, children under 7 were most often bitten after approaching a resting dog and initiating an interaction. "There's no such thing as a bite out of the blue," Dr. Reisner said.
Dogs, cats and other animals in the home might instinctually pounce if someone wakes them unexpectedly, or if someone disturbs them while eating or snatches away a treat or toy — a phenomenon called resource guarding.
The ways young children play can also raise animals' hackles.
According to a study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science in 2017, children typically start playing with their family dog more creatively between ages 2 ½ and 6, including potentially risky behaviors like pulling objects out of the dog's mouth. Even something as seemingly innocent as making direct eye contact, Dr. Reisner said, can make a dog nervous or provoke it to growl or bite.
"Bending over, reaching over, hugging and kissing, patting the head — these are all relatively benign interactions," Dr. Reisner said, "but to a dog, being approached by a little person is often absolutely terrifying."
This is also true for cats, who get especially stressed when they feel cornered, said Mikel Delgado, Ph.D., a certified applied animal behaviorist and a postdoctoral researcher at the U.C. Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, who studies cat behavior.
Animals, like people, have individual preferences, which can vary by day. Some dogs might love getting squeezed in a bear hug or massaged by an adoring child. But others might respond snappishly, even if they accepted such interactions previously. A young child may not be able to tell the difference in time. "I think the real concern with these interactions is that these are really young children who really don't know what they are doing," said Julie Hecht, a Ph.D. candidate in animal behavior at City University of New York.
How to create a more peaceable kingdom
Rule No. 1 of safe child-pet interactions is supervision. In her work with families, Lanfer teaches parents and caregivers how to read subtle elements of a dog's body language. One of the biggest cues that a dog might be on the verge of biting, she said, is a one- or two-second freeze in motion, in which the dog's spine and muscles go stiff. There are several other signs to watch for too, she said. If your child is clutching your dog's paw so that she can teach him how to write with a marker, for instance, your dog may signal a rising stress level by suddenly closing and tensing its mouth or by staring intently. This might be your sign to intervene.
Similarly, if your cat starts swishing her tail back and forth, flicking her ears or tensing her body, she probably is not happy about the tiara that your child tossed on her head, said Dr. Delgado.
But prevention is even better than intervention. According to Lanfer and Dr. Reisner, the best setup for interspecies harmony is to limit and tightly control the way your child interacts with your pet, and to set strict expectations for what is appropriate as children get older. For babies and toddlers, that means almost no physical interaction. If you are cooking in the kitchen and can't reliably ensure your child isn't toddling over to your dog in the living room, consider physically separating them with a barrier like a baby gate, Lanfer said.
Eventually, when children are old enough to understand that dogs don't need to wear clothes because they have fur coats, or that cats don't like hugs because, well, they're cats, caregivers can introduce more hands-on contact, Dr. Reisner said. Young children can help to prepare a food bowl or join a caregiver on a walk. "That's a very reasonable, structured way to interact," Dr. Reisner said. She also jokingly suggested ways to satisfy your child's desire to include your family pet in her games. You can buy a stuffed animal that matches it. If your child wants to dress the cat in a tutu, you can prompt him to put the tutu on the stuffed animal instead.
It's up to the adults to make sure that children are interacting with their pets in ways that make sense for the species. You can teach a child how to invite a guinea pig into your hand with a treat, for example, or help your child train the dog to do an easy trick or play games like fetch or hide-and-seek, Dr. Reisner said.
There may even be human lessons to learn along the way, too, said Lanfer. "We are teaching kids earlier and earlier about consent and personal boundaries and saying no to unwanted touch," she said. "Why not extend that to pets?"
Alla Katsnelson is a science writer and editor in Northampton, Mass. As a child, she taught ballet to her springer spaniel, Heidi.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/parenting/kids-pets.html
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