Just spat out my coffee!

I expect my dog too to put up with mild annoyances, but I actually like it when he expresses discomfort in the form of a growl or a warning. As bad as this sounds, I think that dogs should express discomfort - I remember Alfie, my grandson, treading on Ben's tail by mistake - Ben leaped up with a warning growl and removed himself to the other side of the room. I was with Alfie of course, and stopped him from following Ben, and as young as he was, explained to him that Ben wanted his space and to leave him alone. Alfie knows the rules, he accepts that when Ben says no he must leave him alone, but equally Ben knows that his reaction was undesirable but understandable. As an intelligent dog, he understands when I gently rebuke both him and Alfie.

It is such a delicate balance, but the scales must always tip in favour of the child of course. I do not believe for one moment that Ben would ever bite or even nip Alfie, but he is an extremely large powerful dog and could very easily hurt him unintentionally with his claws or just by knocking him over. The solution is to never leave the two alone together, and to teach Alfie to respect Ben's space - which he does, despite the fact he is only 20 months old. I am hoping that when Alfie is a bit bigger, they will kick a football around together - currently they play ball with a tennis ball - Alfie throws it to Ben, who mauls it around a bit and then rolls it back to Alfie, for the procedure to start all over again!

Good post. Of course large dogs must be made to take it easy with small children (or even small dogs). Nigredo had to learn that jumping up on kids isn't appropriate no matter how excited he gets. He turned out to be over 90 lbs of chubby and heavy pawed Labby guy, so thankfully he learned to stop doing this.

Biggest thing which some people fail so hard at - NEVER leave a dog and a child together alone under any circumstances. It's different with me because the children are not my children and they are never in my home with my dog.

As much as I love Nigredo and know that he loves kids and would never bite them or hurt them on purpose, I wouldn't put him in a home with small kids if I had to rehome him. He still jumps on us in excitement when we come home (we allow this), and little kids would probably get knocked over each time they came home from school etc.

USUALLY we move away from kids who are rough with him in parks etc., his happiness and comfort is my priority, not that of the child who is irritating him. A few parents have acted irritated when I have told their children to stop doing something. These kids are never as young as Laura here. They should know better.

One child came up to him when he was laying beside a bench with me and began playing with him. Then he kept pulling his ear. His mother was literally RIGHT THERE and heard and saw me ask him to stop (very gently saying "Don't pull his ears, that hurts") and refused to say or do anything.

When I physically (but very gently of course) grabbed his hand and forced him to stop pulling his ear and looked him in the eye and told him to stop with a more forceful tone, she acted upset. I had to have told the child 3 or 4 times and she was there and wouldn't say anything. He disobeyed me because he disobeys her. Most children stop when I ask them to.

Oh, well! I would never hurt a child, but he got the message. We have a right to be there and Nigredo didn't like that. He wasn't going to bite, but it was very annoying to him. The child didn't even ask before he began playing with Nigredo and I don't believe it was our duty to get up and leave because a brat doesn't know how to treat dogs.

Had you been there, it would have been funnier. My dog's reaction was truly priceless. The child who grabbed his testicles was a male child as well, so it's funny how that even came about. You have those, too! And then you have the aspect of me trying to answer questions I probably should not be answering.

Lol Myra!!

Thank you for that. We working everyday with Charlie and Laura to make them feel comfortable together. We know what Charlie doesn't like and we trying to explain Laura what she can and what she can't do ( I will never forget moment when she literally grab his balls and she started to pull them really hard)

Sometimes i just make videos for Laura so i kept camera rolling. I talk to her but i put music in editing process so you can hear that. I can't take away Laura all the time when she is around Charlie and she put some things on him, because she started to think touching a dog is something bad and she refused to play with him. I'm Trying to keep balance between two of them.

Sometimes i just make videos for Laura so i kept camera rolling. I talk to her but i put music in editing process so you can't hear that. I can't take away Laura all the time when she is around Charlie and she put some things on him, because she started to think touching a dog is something bad and she refused to play with him. I'm Trying to keep balance between two of them.

Hi Charliedadog - it is so difficult to get this balance. You definitely do not want Laura to be fearful of any dog, especially Charlie, but on the other hand children need to respect dogs. It is so sad when a young child starts to think that dogs are bad, it breaks my heart when some children scream with fear when a dog so much as looks at them. My advice would be to reintroduce them carefully - with supervision of course - and try to rebuild Laura's confidence.

Touching a dog is fine. Pulling his ears, laying on him, etc. isn't good. There have been a few children I've come across that obviously had never been taught how to treat dogs and it was annoying. Due to Laura's age, of course she's going to do annoying things to a dog... which to some degree is acceptable because the dog needs to be able to deal with it without snapping or getting annoyed.

However, it's as you said... Charlie will have enough after a while and then Laura needs to leave him alone. The main incident was the head butting/kissing incident which you said you saw and removed her right afterwards, which is good. She's too small to understand that putting your face into a dogs face like that isn't appropriate.

The video showed a very tolerant dog and a fairly gentle child, I wasn't trying to truly bash the video, I was only hoping that Charlie doesn't have to endure the annoyances all the time. For someone without a small child, I realize it's easy for me to say that, so please don't take offense as I mean none.