My daughter is very much frightened of dogs. What should I do?
By Archana
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I would not totally try to squash this fear. Many children get bit by dogs each year. Here is a few links I am sharing with you. I have enjoyed them immensely over the years: The first is part of a dvd that leerburg sells. Just click the button that says play.
leerburg.com/
Also some pups are very wild and jumpy and scary. I cannot tell you the times I have been bit and scratched all in play and blood was drawn.
Also, maybe the child feels that dogs are like wolves have been characterized on TV. The best way to deal with t his, I would think, would be to have her or him see good calm pups, and not make her or him feel it is necessarily bad to be afraid.
Also here is an index or articles leerburg.com
leerburg.com/
The ones on Preventing Dog Bites in Children and Preventing Dog Bites in Babies are particularly useful. I think a lot of people need to be more careful when putting any kind of a dog around any child without supervision.
Blessings, Robyn
Well said, Robyn, I was thinking the same thing about children needing to understand not all dogs want to be friends, and that a healthy respect for strange dogs is a good thing!
@Archana, maybe you know someone who has a calm, friendly dog your daughter could meet. Also, you can look around for a dog obedience class she could watch from a safe distance to get her used to seeing dogs around in a controlled environment.
But as Robyn said, the most important thing for your daughter to understand is that not all dogs are the same, just like people there are nice doggies, and total grumps. Your daughter could read some books from the library about dogs so that she could learn to read their body language.
This link has printable pages:
This one is fantastic (ok, I might be a little prejudiced, lol, since I live in the UK):
www.bbc.co.uk/
Finally, this last one leads to several other dog and child related pages, and there is a forum, too-ask on there about good ways to help your daughter change her fear of dogs to respect, and perhaps one day she'll know the absolute joy of having a canine companion:
dogs.about.com/
It is important for your daughter to learn how to act around dogs since the badly trained ones will sense her fear and possibly react badly to it.
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