Adding a Pet To your Family

When I lost my dog earlier this week, I thought I was going to wait far longer to add another pet to our family. I could not handle the emptiness of not having her here, and today we added Caleb. At least I think that’s going to be his name. He is an eight week old Corgi and who knows what mix. He was “adopted” from the Humane Society, as most of our pets have been.

When you have a foster or adoptive child, you have to put a little bit more thought into adding a pet to your family than you do with a biological child. One of the things we don’t know is our child’s history with pets. Were there pets in the birth family? Was the child ever hurt by an animal? Has the child ever hurt an animal? Will the child be afraid of a pet? Does the child want a pet?

One of the reasons parents have for getting a child a pet is to teach them responsibility. In fact, that is rather backward thinking. The child must be responsible first before being trusted to care for a pet. We allow our children to feed our pets and give them water, but we monitor to be sure it is done regularly. If I didn’t check our pets might be quite sick or malnourished.

So how do you go about adding a pet to your family?

Start slowly – Talk to your child first and get an idea of what type of reaction comes as the result of the conversation. Remember that with our kids they may give you their feelings in actions rather than words. If you have the conversation and begin to see your child’s behavior deteriorate, you will want to have a further discussion and try to pinpoint the memory or feeling that has been triggered.

Research – Not every pet is a good fit with children. That was one of my main concerns when choosing a puppy. When I found a dog I was interested in, I asked a lot of questions of the shelter staff, researched the breed that I knew, and then talked to Nancy to gain any knowledge that she had about the dog. When everything turned up positive, we moved on to the next step.

Have your child meet the animal – Don’t get so hooked on a particular animal that you will be heartbroken if you have to walk away. We all got down on the floor and played with the puppy to see how he would interact with Hannah and how Hannah interacted with him. If the interactions had not been good, we would have walked away and started searching again.

We have always had pets and it was important that any child that joined our home not be abusive to animals. That was a major “deal breaker” for us and we made that quite clear to our worker. When we have a respite child, my dogs are penned until I have an idea how the child with treat my dogs. If I fear for my dogs, they will remain penned as long as the child is awake. I will not put my dogs at risk.

Be kind to both your child and the animal. Thoroughly evaluate all possibilities before bringing an animal into your home.

Photo credit – My new puppy

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