We all know how joyful and exciting it is to bring home a new baby. But it can also be a stressful time not only for the family, but also the family pets. There’s new baby furniture and new routines, not to mention the new arrival with her unfamiliar sights, smells and sounds. This can cause a major disruption to the pet’s life leading to confusion, distress, depression and even aggression in rare cases. Although it’s uncommon for dogs or cats to show threats or aggression toward infants, it can be difficult for them to adjust to all the things and events that inevitably result from a new baby in the house. All of this can lead to unwanted and inappropriate behavior by the pet, including hiding, destructiveness, house soiling and excessive attention-seeking, which in turn creates even more stress on the human family that is already over-whelmed with their new responsibilities for the baby.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Expectant parents can avoid many of these problems by simply preparing their pets for the baby before the arrival. This can be done by acclimating the family pets to the new routines, baby items and sights, sounds and smells. Fortunately, the family themselves can do this – with the right guidance.
It’s important for expectant parents to start preparing their pets for the baby’s arrival as early as possible in the pregnancy. The more time the family gives the pet to adjust to the new experiences, the easier the transition when baby comes home. We recommend expectant parents practice new baby routines with a life-like doll in the presence of pets and acclimate the pets to baby sounds with high quality recordings. Pairing the activities and recorded baby sounds with treats and petting can proactively prevent the anxiety pets often experience when first hearing loud, unsettling cries from an unhappy baby.
We have what we think is the best recorded audio of baby sounds on our Preparing Fido™ CD available from this website. This CD has 60 minutes of high-quality recorded audio of virtually every sound that babies can make, from coos to screams. And the sounds are presented in 11 individual tracks to make it easy to expose your pet to just the sounds you want in a controlled manner.
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