Children and Dogs: Living Together Safely with Trust and Respect

In brief

The biggest underestimated risk for young children is often not the strange dog on the street but the familiar dog in their own surroundings.

Bites to young children often happen at home, from a familiar dog and in everyday situations involving resources or resting places. In the most detailed case analysis on this, two thirds of these dogs had never bitten a child before.

This leads to the second point, and it is an uncomfortable one: safety for a toddler cannot be achieved through rules the child is supposed to follow. It has to come from the environment.

👉 A detailed look at breed lists, temperament tests and what they fail to capture: When a dog bites

Children and dogs can make a wonderful team. For that to work, it takes adults who understand where the real risks lie – and who know that they lie somewhere other than many advice guides suggest.

1. Where children actually get bitten

In 2007, Reisner, Shofer and Nance analyzed the circumstances of 111 bites to children in dogs seen at a veterinary behavior clinic. The results contradict almost everything that is commonly assumed.

In children under six, the most common trigger was resource guarding – in 44 percent of cases. Food bowl, chew bone, toy, resting spot. In older children, territorial defense came to the fore (23 percent).

18 percent of bites to children under six occurred in painful situations – the child had stepped or fallen on the dog. In older children, this share was zero percent.

Bites to familiar children happened mostly in the house, from a resting, familiar dog – during an interaction that was friendly from the child's point of view.

And the number that changes everything: where the history was known, 66 percent of these dogs had never bitten a child before. 19 percent had never bitten a person.

In other words, the absence of incidents is no guarantee of safety. A dog who has never bitten is not a dog who will never bite.

For context: these are 111 dogs that were seen at a specialized university clinic after an incident – not a representative sample. What the study reliably shows is the distribution of situations, not how often bites occur overall.

2. Why rules for children are not enough

Many advice guides on this topic work with rules that children are supposed to learn: leave the dog alone while he eats, don't disturb him in his bed, respect it when he withdraws.

These rules are right. They just don't work in the age group with the highest risk.

A two-year-old can learn such a rule but cannot yet reliably follow it in every situation. Impulse control and the ability to apply a rule to new situations are still developing at this age. The child can know the rule and still break it – again and again.

This leads to a shift in responsibility that is central: in the first years of life, safety has to come from the environment, not from the child's understanding. A baby gate in front of the dog's bed creates more reliable safety than a rule whose observance depends on a toddler. The same applies to separate rooms at feeding time.

If you try to create safety through the child's understanding, you delegate the responsibility to the person least able to carry it.

From preschool and elementary school age on, this changes. Then rules do hold – and then it's worth explaining them carefully.

3. The three situations with the highest risk

1. Resources

This is number one for toddlers, and it is often underestimated because it looks so harmless.

Resources are not just the food bowl. They include chew bones, toys, an object the dog has found, his resting spot, and sometimes a person. A child who approaches a dog that is eating or chewing creates exactly the situation that, in the case analysis, most often preceded a bite in toddlers.

What works: keeping them apart in separate spaces during feeding and chewing. Not as a training exercise, but as a house rule. Chews are only given when the child is not in the room.

What doesn't work: "teaching" the dog that he has to let anything be taken away from him. That can increase the tension around the resource instead of reducing it.

2. The resting dog

A large share of bites to toddlers happen when the dog is lying down, sleeping or withdrawing. Nearly one in five bites to a child under six happened after the child had stepped or fallen on the dog.

A sleeping dog can be startled. An old dog or a dog in pain may react to being touched before he is fully awake.

What works: the dog's retreat is physically out of children's reach – a gate, a closed room, a raised surface. Not as a rule that is practiced, but as a structural fact.

And just as important: the dog should be allowed to go to this place voluntarily at any time and should reliably be left undisturbed there. A resting place that may only be used on cue is no substitute for a retreat that is freely available.

3. Closeness and hugging

Children express affection physically – hugging, burying their face in the dog's fur, lying on top of the dog. For many dogs, a hug is above all a restriction of movement, not a sign of affection.

Many dogs put up with this for years. "Put up with" is the key phrase: while doing so, they often show stress or appeasement signals that are easily overlooked – and at some point a day may come when they can't take it anymore.

What works: hugging is not practiced as a sign of affection. Stroking on the shoulder or chest is.

4. Supervision means being able to step in

"An adult should be present" is the most common phrasing – and it's not enough.

An adult in the same room who is looking at their phone is not supervising. Supervision means:

• within reach – close enough to physically step in between
• eyes on both – not just on the child
• ready to end it – the interaction is ended before the dog has to end it

The last point is the real one. If the dog has to react himself, supervision has already failed – regardless of what that reaction looks like.

And the honest consequence: wherever this kind of supervision isn't possible – while you're cooking, on the phone, exhausted after a long day – child and dog belong apart. Not as a punishment for either of them, but because otherwise supervision is just a word.

5. Possible signals before a bite

Many dogs show changes in body tension and behavior before a bite. These warning or distance-increasing signals, however, can be very brief, individual or barely recognizable to humans – especially in pain and startle reactions, when growling has previously been punished, and in very fast situations. There is no fixed sequence that every dog goes through in full; the signals only gain meaning in the context of the situation and the individual dog.

Possible signals, in increasing order of urgency, include for example:

• turning away, avoiding, suddenly freezing
• increased body tension, closed mouth, staring
• repeated lip licking, yawning or blinking in a stressful context
• trying to walk away or withdraw
• growling or showing teeth
• snapping
• biting

In families, the early signs are easily overlooked or misread – sometimes even interpreted positively ("he's yawning, he's tired", "he's blinking, he's relaxed").

The most important sentence in this section: growling is not punished. If growling is punished, the dog can learn to suppress this warning signal in the future. As a result, an important advance warning may be missing while the underlying discomfort remains.

If your dog growls, he has communicated something, and the right response is to end the situation and think about how it came about.

👉 Reading your dog's body language · What growling really means

6. Pain and fear: two underestimated factors

In the study by Reisner and colleagues, the anxiety screening revealed abnormalities in 77 percent of the dogs. In 50 percent, medical findings were identified or suspected – orthopedic problems, skin conditions.

This finding does not stand alone: in a larger study of 830 dogs, animals with a bite history suffered significantly more often from medical, particularly orthopedic, complaints.

What follows from this is concrete: if your dog becomes grumpier with the children, reacts more sensitively to being touched or withdraws more often, the first stop is the veterinary practice – not the training class.

A dog with hip pain who gets hugged by a child does not have a training problem.

👉 Recognizing pain in dogs

7. What the dog needs to be able to do – and what doesn't protect

A correction is needed here that many people won't like.

In the same study, two thirds of the owners had attended a training class with their dog, and 93 percent of the dogs were neutered. Above all, this shows one thing: neither basic obedience nor neutering is a safety guarantee when living with children.

However, these numbers do not allow the conclusion that professionally sound training is fundamentally ineffective. What can be concluded: a dog who knows "sit", "down" and "stay" is not automatically safer around children because of it. These cues help in everyday life – as a safety concept on their own, they fall short.

What actually helps:

• A retreat that works – accessible to the dog, inaccessible to the child
• A well-trained trade cue, so that objects don't have to be taken away
• Handling training: the dog learns that being touched, held and examined is predictable and pleasant
• Walking away as a positive option: the dog may leave at any time and experiences that walking away has no unpleasant consequences
• Management, wherever training isn't yet reliable

The most important item on this list is the last one. Management is not giving up: a baby gate separates the situation immediately, whereas a trained cue first has to be given in time and then reliably carried out.

8. What children can learn – and from what age

From preschool age on, rules do hold. The most important ones:

• The dog is allowed to leave. When he walks away, he's done. That isn't rejection.
• Leave the sleeping dog alone. Don't wake him, don't touch him, don't lie down next to him.
• Leave him alone while he eats and chews. Don't go over, don't reach for anything, don't stare at him from close up.
• Unfamiliar dogs only with the owner's permission – and then let the dog decide whether he wants to make contact.
• Don't hug him, don't sit on his back, don't pull him up by the fur.
• When petting: stand still, keep your hand low, let the dog come to you, then stroke from the side on the shoulder or chest – not over the head.

And one rule for parents that does more than all the others combined: if your child says the dog doesn't like something, take it seriously. Children often observe more closely than adults give them credit for.

9. When a baby arrives

Preparation starts before the birth, not after.

• Introduce changes to the daily routine beforehand so that they don't become associated with the baby
• Close off rooms that will be off-limits in the future beforehand
• Set up and establish the dog's retreat while things are still calm
• Introduce new sounds, objects and changed routines early and at an intensity the dog can process calmly
• And above all: don't tie attention for the dog exclusively to baby-free times, otherwise the child's presence can become a predictor of being left out

A common and well-intentioned mistake is to spoil the dog especially in the last weeks of pregnancy – followed by an abrupt break after the birth.

10. And the good sides?

Big promises are made about growing up with a dog: more empathy, more sense of responsibility, more self-confidence.

We are convinced that a well-guided life together gives children a great deal – and we say just as clearly that the evidence on this is mixed. The findings come mainly from cross-sectional surveys, which cannot distinguish between cause and selection: families who decide to get a dog also differ in other ways from families who don't.

What we can say with confidence from practice: children who learn early to read an animal's signals and to respect a no take something away from it that goes far beyond dealing with dogs.

That, however, requires a life together that is safe. Anything else is not an enrichment but a risk with a nice story attached.

11. Conclusion

If you take three sentences away from this guide, make it these:

The dog in question is often your own – familiar, friendly and so far unremarkable. The situations are the bowl, the bone and the bed.

Young children cannot yet reliably apply rules in every situation, and that is not a question of upbringing. Safety therefore has to come from the environment.

If your dog's behavior changes, have pain ruled out first. In the case group studied, medical findings were identified or suspected in about every second dog.

The rest is attention – and the willingness to end an interaction before the dog has to.

References

• Reisner, I. R., Shofer, F. S., & Nance, M. L. (2007). Behavioral assessment of child-directed canine aggression. Injury Prevention, 13(5), 348–351. https://doi.org/10.1136/ip.2007.015396
• Reisner, I. R., Nance, M. L., Zeller, J. S., Houseknecht, E. M., Kassam-Adams, N., & Wiebe, D. J. (2011). Behavioural characteristics associated with dog bites to children presenting to an urban trauma centre. Injury Prevention, 17(5), 348–353. https://doi.org/10.1136/ip.2010.029868
• Thiesen-Moussa, D., Hettwer, A., & Hackbarth, H. (2018). Der Niedersächsische Wesenstest: Ergebnisse des Testens der Gefährlichkeit von Hunden. Berliner und Münchener Tierärztliche Wochenschrift. https://doi.org/10.2376/0005-9366-18042

How to read the sources

The information on triggers and circumstances of bites to children comes from the study by Reisner, Shofer and Nance (2007). It analyzed 111 cases seen at a university behavior clinic after an incident. This sample is not representative of the dog population: it allows statements about the distribution of situations in which bites occurred, not about how often they occur overall. The figure "66 percent with no previous bite to a child" refers explicitly to the cases in which the history was known.

The additional finding on medical complaints in dogs with a bite history comes from an analysis of 830 dogs, reported in a review of the Lower Saxony temperament test (a behavioral assessment used in one German state).

The description of the escalation sequence follows the established account in veterinary behavioral medicine; it is a model, not a rule – not every dog goes through all stages, and the sequence can be shortened in dogs whose warning signals have previously been suppressed.

On the claimed developmental benefits of growing up with a dog, the available studies are mainly cross-sectional and cannot rule out selection effects; we explicitly mark our assessment of this as such.

The recommendations on management, handling and preparing for a baby are based on the principles of learning psychology and practical experience, not on intervention studies.

Key takeaways

The biggest risk for young children is not the strange dog on the street but the familiar one at home. Many bite incidents arise in everyday situations that people don't perceive as risky.

Rules for children are not enough. Safety must not depend on a child remembering something – adults have to shape the situations.

Three situations carry the highest risk: resources, the resting dog, and closeness or hugging.

A considerable share of the dogs involved had never bitten a child before. A clean history is no guarantee of safety.

Supervision means being able to step in, not just being there. Being in the same room is not enough if you can't get between them in time.

Individual signals always have to be seen in the context of the situation. A fixed sequence cannot be assumed.

Pain and fear are the two underestimated factors – and pain doesn't always show itself as obvious lameness.

What the dog has learned protects only to a limited extent. A well-trained dog is no substitute for physical separation.

What works is unspectacular: a retreat with no access for children, separate feeding, protected rest times, no forced closeness.

Frequently asked questions about children and dogs