06/13/2026
What Carl Got Wrong
Good Dog, Carl is a sweet book. A massive Rottweiler, left in charge of a toddler, and everything turns out fine.
It’s also where a lot of us absorbed an idea we never examined: that a dog, if it’s good enough, can function as a kind of built-in babysitter. That the right dog and the right kid will just work it out.
No dog can do that job. Not Carl’s breed, not any breed.
Children and dogs can be wonderful together. They also come with risks. A child can be injured by a dog. And when that happens, the dog usually doesn’t fare well either - rehoming, euthanasia, a family suddenly afraid of their own dog.
Here’s the part that’s harder to hear: there’s no version of “do everything right” that gets you to zero risk. The only thing that gets you to zero is keeping kids and dogs apart entirely, and that has its own costs - for the kid, for the dog, for the family. So what’s left is reducing the odds.
Not eliminating them. Reducing them.
And the margin for error is small with children.
Why kids can’t just “remember the rules”
You can teach a five-year-old, a seven-year-old, even a twelve-year-old how to behave around a dog. They can learn it. What they can’t reliably do is access that learning in the moment - when they’re excited, when their friend is over, when the dog just walked in the door and they want to say hi RIGHT NOW.
That’s a brain thing, not a discipline thing. The part of the brain that handles “stop, think, then act” doesn’t finish developing until the mid-20s. Even young adults make judgment errors that have nothing to do with character and everything to do with a brain that’s still under construction.
A kid hugging a dog, throwing their arms around a dog’s neck, climbing on them, getting in a dog’s face - that’s a kid being a kid, with the brain a kid actually has. And these are behaviors many dogs don’t experience as friendly.
Dogs work the same way
A dog can know all the things you’ve taught it - the recall, the “go to your mat,” the impulse control. But in moments of high excitement, fear, stress, or arousal, dogs don’t always make use of their best learning. They fall back on instinct.
Running, screaming kids, flailing hands, and erratic movement can trigger instinctive responses in a dog’s nervous system, no matter how much training is on board.
Some breeds - herding breeds especially - are wired to respond to running and screaming with chasing and nipping. But don’t let that turn into a false sense of safety with other breeds. A Golden Retriever has the same ability to bite as any other dog.
We’re Not Taught to Read Dogs
Most of us were never taught canine calming signals - the early, quiet communication a dog gives before things escalate. That’s true for a lot of dog trainers too. So when a bite happens, it usually doesn’t come out of nowhere to the dog. It just comes out of nowhere to the people who didn’t know what they were looking at.
What actually helps
None of this is risk-free. All of it moves the odds.
• Teach children how to behave safely and respectfully around dogs. There are excellent child-focused dog safety videos and educational resources available, and they’re worth the time. Children can learn it. Learning and reliably applying that learning are not always the same thing. Expectations should be developmentally appropriate for the child in front of you.
• Learn canine calming signals and other early signs of discomfort. There are good videos out there, and they’re worth the time. These signals will let you know that your dog is telling you they’re uncomfortable.
• Start skills-based, positive-reinforcement training as early as possible, especially with a new puppy - and make bite inhibition part of that work. It’s most effective young, but still worth doing with an older dog, even if it goes slower and is less reliable.
• Avoid training methods that rely on pain, discomfort, fear, or aversive consequences in households with children. Dogs are constantly forming associations. If an unpleasant experience occurs when a child is present, the child can become part of what the dog associates with that experience. That makes the child less safe, not more.
• Supervise actively, every time, until your child is at least twelve. This is the commonly recommended guideline. After that, consider the individual child and the individual dog. There is no age at which supervision suddenly becomes unnecessary. Children mature at different rates, dogs vary in temperament, and good decisions are not guaranteed by a birthday.
• Give your dog a place of their own - a crate, a room, somewhere with a door or a gate - where they can get away from kids or anything else they don’t want to deal with. That space stays off-limits, no exceptions.
A bite can still happen, even with all of this in place. That’s the honest answer.
Supervision, education, management, and training can all help reduce the risk, but they can never eliminate it entirely.
And yet, when we understand both children and dogs, support their interactions thoughtfully, and respect their limits, there’s something really magical about watching a child and a dog explore the world together.
