TL;dr I need to figure out if a basket muzzle is a good, safe option for me dog who has potential to be aggressive towards my toddler.
Before I begin: we have already tried rehoming (we will not send him to a shelter). When trying to rehome, I posted on a local page, gave a lot of info as to why we were rehoming (to make sure he went to the right home), and got reamed for my decision. There were a lot of people making a lot of assumptions so this is lengthy. Needless to say, we have tried EVERYTHING else we can think of. A dog doesn’t deserve to be locked up his entire life, with little interaction, and I will NOT put my toddler at risk.
We have an Australian Shepherd Mix (M, 6 yrs old). We also have a female Australian Shepherd (8 yrs old), and no issues with her. We’ve had them both since pups.
I preface this with- when we got this dog, we had no children, but he has been around children his whole life (for example, I lived with my friend and her family for a couple of years, the kids ranged from 1-6) between family and friends. He has always been good with children. Not overly loving but happy with the attention or indifferent.
He has always been “touchy” and nervous with new people but never aggressive, with the exception of a couple of times people he did not know making him feel cornered. Ex., my brother in law tried to be helpful and let him out of his crate while we weren’t home and the dog freaked out when he tried to reach his hand in, but that is his safe space so we didn’t worry much about it. Over the years, he has needed less and less time to warm up to new people but is always on alert with someone he doesn’t know well.
He is terrible with most other dogs (especially males). We had to rehome a dog because after years of attempts to train them to get along, then attempting separation, it didn’t work out and got dangerous (the other dog is with a family member and doing great).
Anyways, since we have had this dog we have attempted training after training to get him to be less “sensitive”. We have NEVER left my toddler alone with the dog. 99% of their interactions have been with us literally on top of them both. Since my toddler has been born we have emphasized being gentle, no grabbing, hitting, etc. He is a toddler though so there has been occasional roughness (nothing crazy just like a rough grab or something like that). But we have always supervised, redirected toddler, praised the dog for not reacting. Any time the dog has even hinted at discomfort we have moved the toddler away from him and/or put the dog in his safe space. They have a crate only when we leave the house and they have our gated dining room set up for them the rest of the time. My toddler is not/has never been allowed in their “safe spaces”.
A few months back, I was in the kitchen, as were dog and toddler. The toddler was running in circles around the kitchen (not paying any attention to the dog), the dog was laying there, acting calm and normal. Out of nowhere, as the toddler ran past, the dog tried to nip him in the face. I was watching the reaction, it looked so calculated for him to act calm, wait for the right moment, and attempt to bite him.
I KNOW Aussies are herders. But for one, he has never exhibited this behavior before (towards a human). Two, this is exactly the behavior he exhibited towards our male dog we used to have before eventually escalating to full on attack. Three, nipping ankles is one thing, the face of a 1.5 year old is not something I am okay with.
After this happened, we have almost 100% kept them separated. We now have a newborn so we are even less capable of being on top of them throughout the house. We still let them interact but myself or husband are sitting with them, ready to throw ourselves between them. We have baby gates to keep them separate, but my toddler is at the age that we cannot keep him locked in our living room all day. Toddler is going from room to room, doing his thing. He also demands pretty much all of our attention and supervision. So our dog is almost 100% stuck in the dining room during the day. We let him out during nap and after the toddler goes to bed, but that’s such a small amount of time that we have to interact with him. Plus, we’re in the dark depths of parenting young children now, those few times the toddler and baby are sleeping we are trying to catch up.
The dog’s quality of life is terrible. I feel awful. We try to get him out and play with him, but it’s hard. We can’t give anymore of ourselves to anything with a 2 year old and newborn. If you have children, you know how demanding they are.
I have been heavily considering a basket muzzle. And letting the dog out much more often. It would still be supervised interactions, but possibly I wouldn’t have to be literally on top of the dog and toddler when they interact? I am not willing to risk my child’s safety. I’m afraid there’s still a chance for something to happen. Rehoming is only an option if we send him to a shelter which we don’t want to do. He isn’t “cute” and needs a family with either older children or no children who can give him the attention he needs. We are hoping at some point someone will take him but we have to figure something out in the meantime.
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