achoirofcritters:
IT’S NOT A THING. Your dog is not a babysitter or a child caretaker. Your dog is a dog, it’s a domesticated carnivore with teeth and the power to bite and if you trust a child around it unsupervised, you are risking a disaster, even if your dog never bites a child, the risk is always there. To call ANY dog a “nanny” is just inaccurate and perpetuates a very dangerous myth.
This is critically important. For one thing, the “nanny dog” thing is completely made up and for a second thing, you can’t trust young children with dogs.
I don’t care how much you trust the DOG. You can’t trust the CHILD to understand the dog if it feels uncomfortable or wants space. That’s how you end up with children getting bitten. And then the dog is blamed for communicating the only way it knows how. So supervise your children when they’re around the dog.
Even if you don’t think a dog will bite, if they’re big enough they could still knock a kid over or something. Sully loves my 3-year-old nephew but we always have to watch him because even though he doesn’t jump, he’s very enthusiastic in his greetings and he’s right at the kid’s face level.