Finding Space for our Dogs

Ever since we had Liam, we’ve had a vexing problem on our hands: our dogs. As soon as he came around, our ability to pay attention to them dropped pretty significantly. A new baby is a lot of work, especially one that’s required multiple surgeries and has been a little “off” in many developmental phases. Unfortunately, this has created a bit of a problem for us: our dogs don’t seem to like anyone anymore.

My theory is that they know that Liam is why we couldn’t pay as much attention to them and they resent him for it. Unfortunately, this makes them act out to try and get attention… which makes us want to pay less attention to them, repeat until they are both thoroughly annoying. Bad habits they’d never had before, like raiding the garbage and stealing food, are so bad that we leave them in the backyard most of the time. It’s kind of gotten to a point where they’re like jealous siblings.

It certainly wasn’t helped by Shauna being in school. I couldn’t take the dogs and the kid to the dog park at the same time, and nights when Shauna’s home we’ve lacked the motivation to do more than relax after a long week of both work and school (not to mention that was some of the little time we had together). She’ll be done in two days (woohoo!), but even with trips to the dog park, I don’t know if it’ll get better.

Have any of you with kids after dogs had this problem? What’d you do to fix it? We’ve really at our wits end with these boogers.