Give A Dog A Bone

Warning: this video may make you question our parenting.

So one thing that JDubbs and I have started to consider is how Baxter will react to this new, mobile Jax. After all, Baxter is what Jaxalready likes to crawl after the most; we immediately saw we have a potential problem on our hands. Now Baxter may be dumb, but he has never shown anything but love toward our beautiful baby boy--if anything, he likes him better than us (after all, we don't drop food on the floor for him during meals). So we're not too concerned about Jax bugging Baxter, but we thought we'd check it out.

The first thing Jax wanted once he could get around was Baxter's bone. This morning I left J in the living room while I made his bottle and I returned to him five feet from where I left him, happily munching on Baxter's bone! Ewww, I know. But that's not all. He mostly wants the bone while Baxter is happily munching on it because apparently it makes a very appetizing sound (crunch, crunch) and J will be satisfied with nothing other than the bone. So, in a very supervised setting, we let events unfold without our interruption. And it was fine, as we knew it would be.

Baxter lets Jax take the bone, not without a little struggle, but definitely without any aggression. Now I don't want any comments about how the family pet is always the one to maul the innocent baby. We know this, and we're taking the risk. These two are going to be interacting in close quarters for the rest of their lives, so they better learn to share and get along just like real brothers do. So far we're happy with how it's going. And I promise, he's always supervised. Maybe we'll just have to buy Jax a dog bone of his own!

Oh and this video isn't of the first time we tried this--I wasn't trying to capture the moment Baxter potentially attacked Jax on film. This is time number 300 since J could crawl (4 days) that he has tried to swipe Baxter's bone. Notice the snuggle strategy. Apparently it's very effective.

Good boy, Baxter!