Quote Originally Posted by Cataholic View Post
Seriously? In 5 years, never? I would love to know what others that have dogs and children say to this. In the normal course of a day, I shower alone, use the bathroom alone, run up and down the stairs to do laundry alone, fold and put away laundry alone, prepare meals alone. I cannot imagine making the statement that my child is never alone with a dog. You are suggesting that you took your dog with you when you did all this activity? I find that very hard to believe. I find it hard to believe that most parents of smaller children and dog do as you suggest. You are either very unusual, or knew you had a dog with 'tendencies'.
Super late response, but...

do you leave a baby alone, while you're showering? No, I wouldn't do that. I don't find it incredibly unusual either.

There are ways to safely secure a dog and/or keep a dog and child seperate without having one physically at your side. Baby gates, his crate, and brief periods hanging out in the backyard ensured that my dog was NEVER left to the whims of a toddler. It's not that I have a dog with tendencies, there isn't a dog alive that I would trust moreso with "his" children (my brother and my neices) than Gonzo. It's that little children have "tendencies". A woman in my Obedience class started coming in after her Golden Retriever bit her child, while she was preoccupied, for seemingly no reason at all... she took her dog in to the Vet to be euthanized, and they discovered that the child had stuck an ENTIRE pencil into the dog's ear. Another person I know didn't realize that their child had put a rubber band around the family dog's neck until it began to smell from infection. No dog should be expected to simply tolerate the pain/fear that an unsupervised, young child who couldn't possibly know any better can inflict on them.