Hug Baby
was this dangerous? allowing your dog to hug your baby?
I just came across this and some of the comments surprised me, as I would not have though this dangerous, but is it? Is this dog showing dominance?
I’d love to hear from those knowledgeable on mastiffs as well.
THANK YOU.
http://nynerd.com/dog-hugs-baby-photos/
I’m not talking about leaving babies and toddlers unsupervised with dogs but the ‘hugging’ in the photo.
The third picture in particular is very bad. It looks like a lot of weight was put on the baby.
Yes, that is dangerous. Mastiffs are such large dogs that it’s pretty easy for them to accidentally injure a being so small and fragile as a baby; the photographer was lucky that her child wasn’t squashed or suffocated.
However, having said that, this specific situation turned out fine (and yes, that might’ve been solely due to luck, I don’t know). It does look like the dog is putting a lot of weight on the baby, but it’s not THAT much weight. No, I wouldn’t personally allow that to happen, but I have no reason to think that the dog is intentionally exerting force when he’s laying his head on the baby (as in the third picture). Yes, mastiff heads are heavy, but by no means are they insanely heavy, and simply draping his head on the baby should not hurt the infant (assuming that the baby can breathe and everything, of course!). Plus, keep in mind that mastiffs are generally quite gentle dogs, and it appears as though this Neapolitan Mastiff has been raised and taught to be gentle with small creatures like babies, so it’s unlikely that there’s as much pressure on the baby as it may seem.
As for your wondering if the dog is showing dominance, no. I really do not think so. For instance, look at the fourth picture. The dog is giving a crystal-clear calming signal by flicking his tongue over his nose like that, and look at his ears. (If you’re not familiar with calming signals, they’re basically fundamental parts of canine body language that are meant to, well, calm things down. They can be used to calm down someone else, to reassure someone of benevolent intentions, to reassure oneself, to indicate discomfort, etc. I’ll toss a link to an article about them in the sources.) Those ears show joy and deference. (I don’t know if you’ve ever owned a mastiff, but a common gesture to them are “Dumbo ears” or “elephant ears.” When they’re happy and mean no harm, like when you come home and they’re happy to see you, their ears sort of pull open and back. It’s hard to describe, but the Neo in the picture is showing them, although not nearly as emphatically as some mastiffs!) He seems a smidgen too playful and interested in the second picture (that’s the pose where I usually pause what I’m doing and watch my Mastiff carefully, ready to intervene in case he starts trying to paw at and play with the cat, who actually sort of eggs him on, but that’s a different story), but overall, he seems like he clearly means no harm (and he actively chooses not to do something like try to paw at and play with the baby).
Cat mom hugs baby kitten
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