Simba Struggles

I am super bummed and stressed out right now.  Simba, our beloved "first born," is jealous of Gwen.  We knew he would be even before she was born.  And we were hoping that he wouldn't get too depressed when we brought our bundle of joy home from the hospital.  But he was depressed.  We did our best to pay attention to him as much as possible.  We also tried to get people who came to visit Gwen to play with Simba so he wouldn't feel left out.  When our company would hold Gwen, either Keith or I would get on the floor and play with Simba.  We have been taking him on extra walks and giving him extra treats.  But the reality is that when Gwen cries, we have to drop what we are doing and pay attention to her, and sometimes what we are doing is paying attention to Simba.

I can see that the lack of attention is not only getting to him, but that he is getting annoyed with her.  She cries quite a bit (this is to be expected since she is less than a month old), and when she cries and wakes him up he looks grumpy.  He also gets annoyed when he is laying on my lap and I have to make him get up so I can tend to the baby, and there is no mistake that I am tending to the baby when I go and change a dirty diaper.  Finally, Simba is not allowed to sleep in our bed.  We have a chair sitting next to our bed that we placed his dog bed in.  He sleeps in the chair next to our bed, but for the past couple of years has tried to sneak into our bed in the middle of the night most nights.  When we find him in our bed, we send him back to his own.  Since Gwen won't sleep on her own, she has been sleeping on my chest in our bed.  This has placed her above Simba in the "pack."  He has not been allowed in the bed, but after just a couple of weeks of being in our home Gwen was allowed in bed.

This whole situation has been having its ill effect on him for the last 4 weeks.  But last night Simba decided to take a stand.  He has never been aggressive the entire time that we have owned him.  He loves people.  However, the reason that he loves people is because he loves attention.  This new little person not only does not have the ability to pay attention to Simba, but she steals the attention from him.  Last night she was crying quite a bit and he started to bark and growl at her.  I didn't have time to get to her before he did, but thankfully he just licked her face when he got to her.  But since then he has been increasing the amount of barking and growling that he has been doing.  He also climbs up on the back of the couch when she is on the couch on our laps, and he looks like he is getting ready to try to pounce her.  This has me very concerned.  I don't think he would bite her, but he is an animal and animals are unpredictable.  I think he is just trying to assert his dominance (this is why I think that he barked at her, lunged at her, but then just licked her...however, that whole scenario scared me to death).

I googled "dog jealous of new baby" last night.  I have formulated a plan to get him to accept Gwen, or to at least make him obey us.  First of all, we never leave them alone together.  If I have to leave the room, I put her in her pack and play.  Second, when he barks, growls, or shows any sort of aggressive behavior I yell "No!" and put him in time out.  Time out may seem like an abnormal thing to do with a dog, but essentially I just put him in a room by himself for 5 minutes.  He hates being by himself, so if he associates his misbehavior with being made to be by himself, he usually fixes his behavior.  Third, I give him copious amounts of treats.  I bought training treats (treats that only have 3 calories each so you can give several during training without overfeeding the dog) a while back and am now giving tons of treats.  If he sniffs her nicely, he gets a treat.  If I am breastfeeding her, he gets a treat.  If she cries and I have to get up to take care of her, he gets a treat.  If I have to change her diaper, he gets a treat.  If she cries to the point that she is driving both Simba and me crazy, he gets a treat.  Hopefully, he will begin to make the association baby=treat, treat=good, therefore baby=good.

I hope he straightens up quickly and starts to like, or at least be civil towards, her.  It is very stressful to not know what he will do each time he approaches Gwen and me.  I just want them to be friends.  Does anyone have any advice?