Baby Proofing Pet Dishes

Just being vigilant has worked for us. Accept that a few bites of dog food may get eaten, and the area around the dog bowl will occasionally require extra mopping up, and teach the child consistently to stay away and leave the food alone. It works well, unless you have dogs that get aggressive when they are defending their food bowls... that would be a different subject altogether.

I had the same problem except my son was actually eating the dog and cat food. I have 2 entrances to my kitchen (which is where we keep our pet food) and I purchased 2 baby gates and put them up in each doorway. I raised them high enough where the dog and cat could climb under them, but my son never tried to go under it. He knows now that the kitchen is off limits unless we tell him he can take the gate down. Now, his favorite thing to do is put the food in the dish. He feels like a big helper. Hope this helps.

This one is really hard. The only thing we found to do was to designate a specific room (in our case the kitchen) as the dog's room. We gated the kitchen off from the kids when they were babies so that the dog could stay in the kitchen and have access to her food and water as needed. When we wanted to let the dog have more space to roam we would pick up her bowls and open the gates but this way she could usually have access and also could have some quiet time away from the kids as she is an older dog who sometimes got tired of the commotion of toddlers.

Good luck,
K.

We have 2 cats and we keep all of their stuff in our office and put a baby gate in the doorway. The cats can jump over it to get to their food, water and litter box, but my son can't get to it.

Good luck!

a baby gate in the doorway would be a solution. I put up a gate so my dog won`t go into the living room and poop when I am gone , or you would have to watch your child constantly and say , "no" everytime he goes near the food.

H.

Put the dog food and water bowl in the laundry room with a gate high enough for the dog to get under but low enough that your son can't.

We used a baby gate as well, but we cut part of the mesh out so that the cats can go through (they are too fat for jumping). We also did this on the bottom part of the stairs. Haven't had a problem with our 4 kids going through the hole in the gate. Too small and they loose interest pretty quick once they realize they can't go thru it.

Put a child gate up just enough that the dog can get under and not the baby.

We got a portable play yard, we got ours from Babies R Us but I'm sure they are available elsewhere. It is a series of interlocking gates. Ours has 6 I believe but you can add extra panels if needed. We used this for our son to play in when we needed to cook, clean, vacuum etc. Put a few toys in there and keep him within eyesight/earshot and that may work for you. PLus you can fold it and take it with you. It's great for parks and the beach or even grandma's.

We have a dog and cat in the house as well. Our son is not crawling yet but we had to puppy proof the cat litter box and food because the puppy kept eating it- yuck. We put the cat box and food our laundry roon and installed a cat door- cat is too fat to go over gate and the dog somehow manages to get under/through the gate. I am still trying to figure out what to do with the dog food. The cat door works great. It is small enough that neither my son or the dog can fit through.

We used the baby gate in the laundry room doorway, raised just enough so the dog/cat could get under. I have a friend who installed a doggy door into the laundry room. You can buy doors that have magnetic locks, so that only the pet you want to enter the doggy door can get through it. You could also do that to your bathroom door or wherever you want to keep the food (door going from kitchen out to garage). When my daughter got a little older, I taught her not to play with the dog's food and water.