Project Benji

We adopted Benji from a local rescue about 3 1/2 months ago. He is an awesome dog and we love him so much already. He's great with most other dogs and is very friendly with adults and big kids, once he has a chance to sniff them out sufficiently.

John and I are also in the midst of adopting a human baby from Korea. We finished our home study and are now just waiting to be matched with a baby. If all goes well, we should have a baby home with us by late Fall 2010.

So in order to make sure Benji would be comfortable with a little one in the house, I've been reading a lot of books on preparing dog for baby. One of the things the book highly recommended is to expose the dog to well-behaved children as often as possible.

So I recruited all my closest friends and asked them to help us out with "Project Benji". Everyone was eager to help us and we had kids lined up to visit us. (I've got awesome friends, if I may brag...)

Sadly, Project Benji has been a massive FAIL.

Let me re-cap:

Exposure #1: BFF arrived with her two little ones. 5-year old M and 7-month old J. We had M lavish Benji with treats and all went well at first. Then we let our guard down. :-( Benji was playing with a toy moose (that he stole from J) and J reached over to get his moose and Benji froze (I should have jumped in when I saw the freeze) and next thing I know, Benji is lunging towards J. :-( Luckily, Benji barely made contact and other than a small pinkish area on his arm, J was ok. Crisis diverted...or so we thought.

Exposure #2: Other BFF arrived with her two little ones. 5-year old A and 3-year old B. A LOVES dogs and was so excited to meet Benji. We had her give him lots of treats and Benji seemed to warm up to her a lot. She threw tennis balls for him and he returned them to her. All seemed well. We let our guard down. As Benji was chewing on his bully stick, A reached over to pet Benji and he lunged at her and clamped down on her forearm!! He left teeth marks and a bruise, but didn't puncture skin. HUGE FAIL. We were so upset!

After the second incident, I spoke to Benji's obedience trainer. She told me to put away all of Benji's treats and toys when little ones were around b/c based on the two incidences, it seemed that Benji was a resource guarder. This surprised me b/c Benji lets me and John remove food from his mouth, take away toys, etc without as much as a snarl. He is the most non-resource guarder with us! But how he is with us, is clearly not how he is with kids. :-(

So this past Sunday leads us to Exposure #3. Our good friend L came over with her two little ones, 5-year old H and 18-month old P. We let H lavish Benji with treats and the initial meeting went well. P even hugged Benji several times. (big mistake... in hindsight) Anyway... long story short, P got BITTEN in the FACE by Benji!!! There were two puncture wounds, one on his cheek and one by the corner of his mouth. We rushed him to the Urgent Care center. Thankfully, the wounds ended up not being that deep and the doctor recommended that L just wash P's face with soap and water 3X a day to keep it clear of bacteria. No stitches needed.

I also had to fill out a form for our county Animal Control with Benji's information. I think he's on the county sh!t list now. :-( I'm expecting a call from Animal Control any day now...

John and I were so upset and traumatized by the whole thing. It seemed like the injuries Benji was causing were getting progressively worse!


So last night after obedience class, i stayed late to speak to the trainer. I told her about our impending human baby adoption and my huge fear that Benji will continue to bite children. I told her that re-homing Benji is our absolute last resort and that we were willing to do whatever it takes to work with Benji.

We were given two homework assignments:
1. Start crating or putting Benji in a closed off area (our mudroom) away from us while we are home for short periods of time, eventually extending it to an hour or so.

She said when our baby arrives, there will be many times when we will be so preoccupied with baby (crying, diaper change, feeding, whatever) and won't be able to supervise Benji, so we need to be able to put him away in another area where he won't get stressed out or feel like he's being punished.

He needs to know that being crated or being put into the mudroom doesn't mean we are leaving him or punishing him. It's a happy, quiet place for him instead. All he knows now is that when we put him in the mudroom, we're leaving the house, so we need to work on getting him used to being crated or in the mudroom while we're home.

2. Expose Benji at least 30-50 times to different children. Have Benji on a leash and step on his leash. Have the child stand far enough away so that Benji can't reach him/her. Have child stand so that he is not directly facing Benji, but rather so that the child is perpendicular to Benji. Have child toss a high-value treat towards Benji and then walk away. let Benji eat treat. Have child return to standing position, toss another treat and walk away. Let Benji eat treat. Repeat. 100x.

That was not a typo. She said to repeat it 100X!! But then she said,"well, you know what I mean. do it A LOT."

Then we put Benji in his crate or in the mudroom so he can rest in his "peaceful spot" and he is not allowed to play with the child.


The trainer said to contact her once we've finished these homework assignments and then she'll give us the next step.

the hardest part will be finding parents that will be willing to have their kids help us!! Benji is starting to develop a reputation (rightly so) as a biter of children! :-( I'm hoping my neighbor will be ok with her daughter helping us...

We'll see how it goes!! Please keep your fingers crossed that this works!!