Last few months I had really exhausting debates with my family and my wife's family about bringing a new born child into home where we live together with our dog. They were nagging about dog hair, barking and also about our obligations about our dog. For the last five years, Ria was the only child we had. We have also a cat, but a cat is something like... distant cousin. It is very different with Ria. We have connection since I brought her in our apartment with me. My wife was my girlfriend back then but also fell in love with Ria very much.

So three of us were a little family!

Ria is a really benign beagle and completely harmless. When she was a puppy, she had really big amounts of extra energy and that made me to take her for long walks three of four times every day. That actually saved my life and helped me to fight my ankylosing spondylitis. We walk every day, all together 12-15 kilometers and I don't mean to stop with that now when we have a child.
Until 9 months ago, Ria never attacked another dog. When my wife became pregnant, Ria turned to be protective. When I was walking with Ria alone, there weren't any problems, but when my wife was with us, Ria was barking on other dogs trying to warn then to keep distance. The connection between my wife and Ria became even closer. Ria didn't miss any opportunity to place her head on my wife's belly to feel baby's moves.

Ria have never growled on humans and never attacked anyone. She is completely friendly and I someone breaks in my apartment, Ria would just come to play with a burglar.

She is too gentle and loves humans very much, especially children. She is too careful not to hurt anyone accidentally, she doesn't bite things, doesn't lick people, only thing that she does is nosing.
Ria is a perfect dog, the best that dog can be, so my wife and I were made about what her mom and my mom say that we should remove our dog outta our place.

That made us pretty angry.

Especially my wife's mother was always against us living with a dog. My mother was a dog owner more times, so she understands this situation much better, but also nagging about dog hair.
It is summer and our dog is changing her hair but we can deal with that. I brush her every day and we don't have that hair on our apartment's floor.

Having a dog is great responsibility, but having a child is much greater responsibility, so we had to make a plan how to introduce our baby to our dog. At first, we were looking on the internet how to do it, we were searching for other people's experiences and advice. But I don't think that anyone knows our dog's character better than us so we decided to do it our own way.

When I took my wife to hospital, Ria started to feel depressed.

She followed me wherever I was going, watching my each step. I was, and still I am, really careful not to give her less attention than I did before.
So, when my daughter was born, my wife gave me one towel that the child was cleaned with, to introduce it to Ria. I brought a towel home and gave it to Ria. She was only sniffing around it and finally lied down next to that towel and fell asleep. In that moment, I knew that there will not be any problems.

Day before yesterday, I went to hospital to pick up my wife and our beautiful baby! We didn't have any fear when we introduced our baby to Ria. Ria was so happy to see my wife and recognized our daughter at the first moment. She only smelled her, then sat next to a baby basket and looked an my wife and me like she was saying: "The only babysitter in this home is me!" Thank you!