The dogs meet a baby

So, in anticipation of Annie, Nikki and I have been curious about how the dogs, Asta and Ruby, will react to a baby taking over the house. With that in mind, we've gotten a toy doll that makes noises and have driven the stroller around the apartement, basically trying to get them acclimated to everything.

As a final test, our friends Carmen and Dirk were kind enough to bring over their 9 month old son Casey as sort of a guinea pig. When they first got there, everyone sat on the floor, with their respective babies, and did introductions. Of course, the dogs were straining wildly to sniff not only Casey, but Carmen and Dirk as well. Casey was a little freaked out, but that had as much to do with being in a strange place, let alone having dogs sniff his feet. In any case, it only took about 10 minutes for everyone to get comfortable with each other.

We all proceeded to have a nice brunch, complete with bagels, toast, fresh tea, and juice without any drama. In fact, once over, Casey had fun exploring the apartment. He can crawl around and climb up to an assisted standing position, which completely freaked out the dogs. Casey would be sitting in the middle of our dining room, and Asta and Ruby kept doing "fly-byes" of him, with just a sniff or two, and then would continue on their way. When Dirk would pick up Casey and fly him around, the dogs had no idea what to do. Dirk would swoop Casey in and the dogs would recoil back. Towards the end, Ruby bounded up, thinking that it was play time, but on the whole, both dogs approached it very carefully.

In the end, I think everyone was very assured by the experiment. By the end of the 3 hour visit, the dogs could care less where Casey was because they were on the couch/carpet, dead asleep, apparently exhausted from the excitement. At no point did they seem aggressive or get cranky with Casey, even when Casey would reach out and try and grab a chunk of their ears.

It looks like Annie will have a nice set of cuddly puppies ready and waiting to have one more person in the family to huddle next to and cuddle with, and we can't wait to see it!