Should my kids have a dog?

Listen to the original episode here.

Transcript:

Dr. Amy Fan Conrad: Welcome to the Ask Dr. Amy podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Amy Fan Conrad. I'm a board-certified pediatrician, the founder of Kinder Digital Pediatric Clinic, and I want to empower you on the parenthood journey. On this podcast, we dive into a wide range of topics about children's health, helping parents become the experts in relating, interpreting, and nurturing the personal needs of their children. We cut through the noisy cultural clutter of conflicting information about what is best and give practical advice for a more natural, instinctive form of parenting by tuning into what kids really need. So we can do less, connect more, reduce our stress and raise happier, healthier children.

My parents totally got on the pandemic puppy train. We've had grown dogs before, but it's actually their first time with a puppy. They got this adorable golden doodle and even though he's a lot of work, surprise, they of course don't mind, they love him. Now that we have a baby, it is great timing, and I love having them bring the puppy over, and I love the idea that our baby gets to grow up with a dog around.

Occupational Hazard, I always have to put in the disclaimer that I know dogs are some of the most cherished members of our family and they can be very well trained and people have used them to babysit for centuries. But animals are still not completely predictable and having worked in the pediatric emergency rooms, I know that sometimes even the best-trained family dog can accidentally harm a child. I will always recommend you have the kids play with animals as much as possible, but please have an adult to be watching just to be safe. Even though a lot of people say their dogs are better at babysitting than many people. 

Today I wanted to quickly talk about having a dog, because I've seen this debate and I don't often make recommendations, but here, I want to make a wholehearted plug for having a dog or an animal in your child's life for many reasons. I think the concern comes from some people thinking that maybe their child would develop an allergy or that the dog is so dirty. They have dust and dander and bring in all kinds of things in their furs. Is that safe for especially a young baby to be around? Babies are picking up everything off the floor; they're chewing on the dog. Is it okay? Is it hygienic?

So the answer to this is actually evidence-based, and in a 2017 article out of Jama Pediatrics, a study followed the effects of having a dog on a group of kids, I think starting at least age one. They found that over a long period of time, the kids do not develop more allergies, they do not develop more type 1 diabetes, which is an illness that's linked to the autoimmune kind of allergic system as well as things like asthma. All these things run in the families, but that particular study found that there was no increase in these incidents for kids who were exposed to the animal from a very early age, and other studies have reinforced that it actually reduces the incident, reduces the risk of developing these conditions if the kids grow up with a dog or an animal in the house.

This is another triumph for hygiene theory, which is the theory that if we expose kids to elements in their environment early on, then they're less likely to develop an allergy. One good example is introducing nuts and other allergen foods to babies as young as four months so they're less likely to be allergic to them later, and that is, again, also evidence-based. So our immune system spends all day being like the policemen of our body. They're monitoring for foreign things, things that they don't recognize as the self, and things that they want to protect us from. The more foreign something is, the stronger the reaction.

So the thought is by having kids being around things of the world earlier on, their immune system is different from an adult's and they're more likely to recognize those elements as normal, versus if they've never seen it as a kid, they never saw dust or dander, or peanuts, or things like that, then an older child's immune system seeing it for the first time might develop that allergy. So we still don't know if that's exactly the mechanism, but this hygiene theory is supported by the evidence of lower chances of allergy and in this case, lower chances of childhood illness. That's right.

The study actually found that they're less likely to have ear infections, less likely to need antibiotics, and have decreased rates of asthma when they have early animal exposure. It seems like sometimes, especially an outdoor animals can be very dirty, but if you think of how our ancestors lived thousands of years ago, we lived outside among the animals. So in many ways, how clean our modern world is actually gives us some problems. For example, the soil is so clean, we don't have enough B12 and the animals don't even have enough B12, so we can't get it when we eat them or when we eat the vegetables because they don't have that rich B12 dirt that our ancestors had and we have to take supplements of B12.

So in a similar way, our body, our physiology is very much used to being outside, that I think dust, mud, any exposure a child can have to nature and to all the things found in nature can only be better for the child. So that's the medical side and the medical benefit of having a dog. 

There are other character-forming benefits as well. One big one is responsibility. Taking care of a dog is a big job. It requires consistent work and dedication every day. It's a commitment for many years hopefully, and toddlers, especially, are always interested in imitating the adults. So it's a great opportunity, especially if they ask to start the conversation about responsibility, taking care of this family member, what they can do, and ask them to commit to something.

Usually, around the age of five, kids can understand and handle a job consistently and this is a great opportunity for learning and play to go together. A 5-year-old probably won't be able to walk the dog by himself or herself, but if you involve them in this responsibility, or give them some other smaller task, it feels like play, but they're learning that commitment, the responsibility, and that's great for them. They also learn trust and compassion. Dogs are very compassionate and humane animals. The bond that they can develop with a child, I'm sure we've all seen those, the cutest things on Instagram and YouTube, but it's true that kids need connection with adults and they need their trust and safety with adults.

But, animals can also provide that, and having that in place as the kid gets older and especially if they're having a hard time with something, that animal can really provide actual support and help them feel more confident and have less stress. It's a co-regulating kind of system and a really precious friendship.

Now, circling back to allergies, I do have to say, it's not a guarantee that a child who had a dog early on would not develop allergies. They can happen at any time. In fact, if your child already has an allergy to dogs, I don't recommend you getting one thinking that it will cure them. If you do get a dog and the kid becomes allergic, then that can be a hard choice. Do you get to keep the dog? Is there anything you can do about the allergy? This is when I would go to my allergy specialist colleagues, and they do have some things that may help him. It doesn't always work, but it's worth exploring.

But again, I don't recommend having the dog in an environment where people are actively allergic. For kids that can lead to other autoimmune symptoms like asthma. Because again, if the immune system is already wramped up, recognizing something and having a reaction, then always having that reaction day in and day out can be too much. Something like asthma, eczema, those are mediated by when that immune system turns on itself, calling autoimmune, so we recognize the self as foreign and we start to attack parts of our own body. We don't want that to happen.

So we want to remove the chronic allergens if someone is truly allergic. But again, hope is not lost. Talk to an allergist. They do have shots and people have been known to overcome them. So if you're thinking of getting a dog or introducing a furry friend to your kids, I really hope you decide to go for it, and I think everyone's life will be enriched by it.

I hope you've found this episode helpful. If you're interested in a one-on-one consultation with your own on-demand Kinder pediatrician, like me, you can find us at gokinderkid.com. You can find the show notes for this episode at askdoctoramy.com and that's doctor all spelled out, and you can find me on Instagram also @askdoctoramy.