Why Wouldn't She Listen?

[SkySoaringMagpie]

Lots of good advice already, I'll just say a couple of things that I haven't seen explicitly written in this thread.

It is not unheard of for young children to kill or seriously injure small dogs. It's not unheard of for puppies to to have short, painful lives as an unsupervised child's plaything before winding up in the vet with a broken back. I'm not talking about budding serial killers, I'm talking about kids with parents who just don't have the insight, energy and skill to supervise a dog and a child so that the dog is never in position where the child can do that kind of damage. It's also not unheard of for parents to refuse to contemplate the idea that their child could hurt a dog even accidentally, and that kind of denial triggers warning bells for breeders. There are plenty of breeders who are disinclined to sell small dogs to families with kids for these reasons, much less to families with kids with special needs. It's not that they don't listen, it's that they are not prepared to take the risk. Everyone says they are responsible, not everyone is.

I think the breeder was trying to be helpful by suggesting more robust breeds, and I agree with Sandra that a Stafford sounds like a great idea. On the other hand, I have seen some dogs live miserable lives in families where they were bought for their breed's reputation as robust and tolerant. I will never forget a colleague's Golden Retriever copping all sorts of punishment from the family toddler, and when I said it was risky, they said it wasn't a problem because they deliberately bought a Golden because they were good with kids. Even tolerant baby-sitter dogs need to be supervised with kids, not just because they can snap, but because it's cruel to make them live their lives like that and letting a kid scream in a dog's face, pull its ears and jump on it doesn't teach the kid about appropriate behaviour around animals.