Chewie, all 18 white, fluffy pounds of him, has lived the rags-to-riches story—in reverse. For the first four years of his life, the bichon frise accompanied his mistress, Francesca Castagnoli, a writer who lives in Brooklyn, everywhere. She would bring him to bars and order water for him alongside her cocktails. When she was at work, he would stay at a "bed and biscuit," then be chauffeured—via a car service called PetEx—to her office at day's end. His daily care cost as much as $75. Until Castagnoli got what arguably she'd wanted all along: Conrad, a biped baby boy.
Chewie's riches transmogrified to rags before his owners' eyes—and camera lenses. "We have pictures of him meticulously groomed," Castagnoli says. "And then you see him with the baby. As Conrad gets bigger in the pictures, Chewie gets more matted." Shortly before her second son, Dashiell, was born, Castagnoli talked to other mothers at Conrad's preschool. "They were all so over their dogs, warning me that after the second child, you're ready to get rid of the pet," she recalls. "I was horrified." She resolved to give Chewie at least five minutes of uninterrupted lovin' each day. Invariably, though, it remains the first task to fall off her to-do list.
If only Chewie had seen (or sniffed) it coming, this inevitable change in the relationship between owner and dog. According to trainers, one of the best ways to acclimate your dog to the new household dynamic is through newborn-simulating sensory stimulation in the months before the due date. For instance, play your dog a CD like The Sounds of Baby ($17), which emulates infant noises, from toy squeaking to screeching. Or expose the dog to various baby products. "The human nose has 5 million scent receptors, while a dog's has 220 million," says trainer Victoria Stilwell, author of It's Me or the Dog. "Your baby is going to smell fascinating to your dog, so introduce her now to baby smells."
And no matter how well-adjusted your dog appears to be with your kid, San Francisco dog trainer Youngblood Harris warns against leaving the two together unattended until the child is about 10. That may sound extreme, but it really is a good idea to have at least an ear attuned to the goings-on. Chris Putrino, a lawyer in Buffalo, figured this out the hard way when his dog, Lucy, snapped at his then 1-year-old son, Fox. "I threw her outside," he says. "I pounced on her and wanted to strangle her. I was determined to make her understand that another snap would not be tolerated." (Harris doesn't condone this approach. He says that if your dog shows sustained aggression around a baby, it's time to hire a trainer.)
Since then, "there hasn't been so much as a mean look between Lucy and Fox," says Putrino, who happily reports that his son, now almost 5, has a true friendship with the pet. "Fox loves his dog—he takes her upstairs when he's scared of the dark," he adds. "The thought of a Lucy-less house has never crossed my mind. We just had another son, and I knew how to get the dog ready for him. I just had no idea what to do about Fox."
