The newest member of my family is a 7 month old Shitzu/Lhasa Apso/Yorki mix.   He is probably the best puppy I have ever owned.  He loves my  3 1/2 year old daughter which was very important to me.  We are learning to be gentle with him.  However even when my daughter is not the best with him he still is gentle with her.   And very smart I might add as well.  Besides crate training does anyone have any suggestions regarding training.  He is very smart as far as doing his business outside however letting us know he has to go outside is another story.  I have been taking him out generally every 15 to 30mins.  I guess in due time he will eventually understand what he needs to do. Anyone thinking about getting a dog and not sure it's the right thing to do it without a doubt has been very helpful getting our new puppy for our house!

We have 2 dogs, one adopted from a shelter and the other was from a petstore...we had the dogs first...kind of thought that if we could raise good dogs, then we could try a human puppy!!  they love our 2 year old, and she loves them...but isn't always as gentle as she should be.  our mutt is a lab mix and very laid back..she puts up with the baby poking and sometimes kicking.  the other dog is a boarder collie, and much more tempermental...he runs away from most contact, but if you get near the baby...he's watching you!! 
Crate training is the best way to train a dog, in my opinion.  the trick is to never use the crate as a punishment.  it should be the dogs safe place that is their home.  our oldest dog is 9 years old, and if you say to get in your crate, she's as happy as can be.  we don't even use it anymore, it's in the basement, but if the dog goes down there, she goes into her bed. 
Is it wrong to corrolate dog and baby behavior?  Many times they seem so similar!

Marf220

We had our children first.  We got our puppy (a chocolate lab at 3 mths old) last fall.  At that time we had a  3 year old and a 1 year old and I was 6 mths pregnant with our now 4 mth old daughter. Clover (the dog) is great.  She is very good with the kids.  They can jump on her and hug her and pull her tail and she doesn't mind a bit.  Her only bad habit that is slowly going away is her puppy "nipping"  it was very annoying to get a pinch in the back of your leg or on your hand when you walk by, but to a younger child it is worth tears.  She is almost broken of the habit (I am not sure why I say broken because all we did was tell her no every time she did it in a firm tone, but didn't really have any tactic for deterring the behavior, she basically just moved away from it on her own).  It is a lot of work to have a puppy and then really young kids because a puppy is just like adding a baby to the house, so in our case it was like adding 2 babies to our house in the same year.  If your up for a challenge and get a gentle breed of dog I say go for it, otherwise I would wait till the kiddos were older or the dog was well trained before adding to the family.

Brandi

Oh and we adopted it from a family whose dog had pups, they weren't breeders though.

Brandi

We had to give away our three cats because of my son's allergies. We are hoping to get a guinea pig - if he passes the allergy test. We just cannot keep fish alive!

We have great Rotti/Black lab mix, and we got her when my 4 year old daughter was 3 months old.  She's great with our 3 daughters, they can crawl all over her, pull on her tail or pull her hair and she'll just lay there and lick the kids.  The only downfall about her I think is that she barks at everything that goes past the driveway!!  She's very protective of our kids, but all in all she's a great dog!

We have 2 dogs and a cat.  One of the dogs is a great medium sized mix and the other is a golden retriever.  The retriever is FANTASTIC with our boys who are only 3 and 1.  The other dog just goes away when he gets tired of the kids.  We also have a cat, but she typically will just hide from the boys.  All were in our home before kids and I'm embarrassed to admit have taken a complete backseat since the boys were born.  I was NEVER going let that happen!

Our family pets are: (1) A Jack Russel Terrier named Apple, who we got from my boyfriends mother who used to breed them. This was the first pet we added to our family and Apple became a part of our family when our daughter was about 5 or 6 months old. Apple isn't really fond of young children, she has never harmed, nor tried to harm our daughter, she just runs off and hides by my boyfriend when she sees the baby coming. (2) Is Ecko our Pitbull / Bullmastiff who just turned 1 year old and is the youngest of our animals. We found him in Uncle Henry's. Ecko is our daughter's favorite and is the best behaved with her, our daughter can be a little bit rough sometimes and he doesn't mind at all and just lays there while she pokes at him and tugs his ears, he's very lovable and dopey looking, everyone who meets him falls in love with him. (3) The last animal we have added to our family (the middle child of our animals) and she is a cat our daughter named Chloe. We adopted Chloe from the animal shelter in our area. She calls Chloe "my friend" she loves that the cat sleeps at the foot of her bed and is always cuddling with her

All in all the animals and our daughter get along together absolutely great, the animals all get along with one another and all love the baby and cuddle with her and greet her when we come home with doggy kisses (YUCK!!!) And I do have to say that although I'm allergic to dogs, cats, dust, mold, pollen, etc... They are beloved members of our family and we would all be lost without our furry friends!

We have a mixed breed from a local shelter.  She had been abused and returned twice as "untrainable".  We've had her for 3 years now and there are still only 2 behavioural issues - she likes to bolt out the door given the chance and she still pulls on the leash occasionally. not big behavioural issues. She is fantastic with all kids and other animals (hmm, that one didn't come out quite the way I meant). She's smart, funny, and very loving.  All she needed was some love, attention, and to not be the Alpha dog and the "untrainable" issues were gone.

Some folks are afraid of shelter dogs because they can't see the personality of the dog, and how it will interact with family and friends.  It's too bad, there are some great friends to be found in shelters.  Just use your common sense and if you have kids, bring them with you to the shelter, but be prepared to tell them No or Not today.  Let them be introduced to the potential family member.  If you have other animals, ask the shelter personnel if the dog can be put in with another shelter animal to see how it will react.

We are so glad to have adopted our newest family member.  We can't imagine life without her.

                                     We have 2 female Maine Coon cats, both are 2yrs old!! they grow for about 5yrs though,and one weighs about 25lbs already!! the other is around 15lbs!! We got both of them free from our site manager at Delaware Moms Like Me,her FIL gave them to us!!! They both were very skiddish at first ,but now they both are nice and friendly!!They are very good about my 4 1/2 month old son!! Ones' name is Brandy and the other is Kengah,both are declawed front and back and are fixed!! The gentleman who gave them to us had them both done before he gave them to us!! The big one ,Brandy actually plays ball with me!! I roll her a ball,and she slaps it back!! She also plays fetch!! She acts like a cat,but is dog like too!!! And pretty much is the size of a medium dog also!!! They are great fun pets and if we had to buy them,We would have spent at least 3,000.00 for the 2 cats!!!  They both cost the man 800.00 each plus an additional 1,700.00 for fixing them!!! So we were more than greatful to get them!!!! And they are so cute!!!!! I would love to get 2 more one day!!!

Csilla