The one rule

Never leave a baby and a pet alone together — not for a second, not even a pet you trust completely. Everything else on this site is secondary to this.

Pets & newborns

Your dog was
your first baby.
Now there are two.

Most dogs adjust to a new baby well, given enough preparation and the right structure. This site is about doing that preparation properly — starting months before the birth, not the week you come home.

Start preparing Look up your breed
A calm dog lying on the floor outside an open nursery door, an empty cot visible inside
Most of this goes well. It goes well because somebody planned it.
3 monthsHow far ahead preparation should ideally start
6–12 monthsWhen risk peaks — once the baby can move
NeverHow often they should be left alone together

Four things to get right

In roughly this order. Everything on this site fits into one of them.

An expectant couple standing in their living room with their dog sitting at their feet

Prepare early

Every change you make before the baby arrives is a change your dog never associates with the baby.

The timeline & the barriers →
A dog lying on a sofa with its head raised, watching something out of frame

Learn the signals

Tell the checker what your dog is actually doing and get what it means, how urgent it is, and what to do now.

Signal checker →
A very large dog lying stretched right across a two-seat sofa

Know your own dog

Breed is a starting point, size decides the consequences. Look yours up and read what it tends to need.

Breed & size finder →
A small dog settled inside an open wire crate in a bright living room

Let equipment do the work

A gate works when you are exhausted. A rule you meant to follow does not.

The kit that helps →
The pattern

It is almost never a stranger’s dog.

Serious injuries to babies overwhelmingly involve a familiar dog, in the family home, with an adult somewhere in the house. That is why “but he is so good with her” is not a safety plan.

A substantial share of infant fatalities in the published reviews involved babies who were asleep when the dog reached them. When you are asleep, you are not supervising — which is the argument for a barrier on the door rather than a rule everyone intends to keep.

A dog sitting alone in a bright hallway, facing a closed door
The dog that lives here. Nobody else in the room.
~4.5m Dog bites in the US each year. Around half of the victims are children. CDC / widely cited surveillance estimates
>75% Of dog attacks on young children are to the face and head. Paediatric head & neck dog bite reviews
~370× The dog-bite death rate for neonates compared with adults aged 30–49. Sacks et al., dog bite-related fatalities
~84% Of bites to children happen at home, usually with a familiar dog. Johns Hopkins Medicine
About these numbers The underlying studies vary in country, period and method, so read them as an indication of scale rather than a risk figure for your household. We do not publish first-person accounts of babies being injured, because we cannot verify them and inventing one to make a point about child safety would be indefensible. The data is frightening enough and it has the advantage of being true.

What does your breed tend to need?

Pick your dog from the list and get an honest read: how much structure that breed usually needs around an infant, whether it belongs in the room, and the one thing to watch for.

Open the breed finder Preparation timeline