The Absolute Chaos of Raising Twins and a Baby German Shepherd

I'm currently watching a forty-pound creature with ears the size of satellite dishes attempt to herd my two-year-old daughters into the downstairs loo. The creature, a dog who seems entirely unaware that he's not currently employed on a farm in Bavaria, thinks this is a highly efficient way to manage his flock. The daughters, who are currently wearing nothing but mismatched wellies and a staggering amount of yogurt, think it's a hilarious game of tag. I'm just standing here, leaning against the doorframe, trying to drink a cup of lukewarm tea before someone requires Calpol, a plaster, or a trip to A&E.

This is my life now. It wasn't always this way. Two years ago, we just had the twins, which felt like drowning in a sea of nappies and sleep deprivation, but at least human babies don't chew through the skirting boards. But then, in a moment of sleep-deprived madness, my wife decided we needed a family dog.

The profoundly stupid decision to get a working breed

We didn't get a sensible dog. We didn't get a lazy, flatulent bulldog who would sleep eighteen hours a day and occasionally grunt at the postman. No, we brought home a baby German shepherd, a breed known for being incredibly intelligent, fiercely loyal, and requiring roughly the same amount of daily exercise as an Olympic triathlete.

My mate Dave came round the day we brought him home, took one look at the oversized paws and entirely serious expression on this tiny fluffy face, and immediately dubbed him "Baby G." He sounded like a 1990s rapper, but unfortunately, the name stuck with the girls. They couldn't say "German Shepherd" (to be fair, half the time they can't say "biscuit" without it sounding like a threat), so Baby G he became.

The first few weeks were a blur of bodily fluids. There were baby bodily fluids, which I was used to, and puppy bodily fluids, which were entirely new and somehow more pungent. I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees with a bottle of enzyme cleaner, desperately trying to figure out if the wet patch on the rug was from a toddler who had managed to remove her nappy in record time, or a puppy who simply forgot he was indoors. Usually, it was both.

Sharp objects and the people who love them

Then came the teeth. Nothing prepares you for the sheer volume of teeth in a house containing twin toddlers and a baby German shepherd. The puppy had needle-sharp little daggers that he wanted to test on absolutely everything—the sofa, my ankles, the Amazon delivery driver's shin. The girls, meanwhile, were erupting their own molars and had developed a habit of biting each other, me, and occasionally the dog's tail, which I strongly advised against but no one listens to me anyway.

I read somewhere—or maybe a tired health visitor mumbled it to me during a weigh-in clinic—that puppies use their mouths to explore the world, much like babies do. This is a very poetic way of saying your entire house is going to be covered in spit.

To preserve what was left of our furniture, we initiated a strict division of chewable goods. The dog got a massive, indestructible yak chew that smelled faintly of old cheese and despair. The girls got the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. I’ll be completely honest, this thing genuinely saved my sanity during the worst of the teething strikes. It’s shaped like a little panda, it’s 100% food-grade silicone, and it has these brilliantly textured surfaces that the girls would just gnaw on aggressively for hours. Because it’s flat and easy to hold, even when they were tiny they could grip it without dropping it every four seconds. I ended up buying three of them, largely because I kept finding them hidden inside my shoes or under the dog's bed. The dog, to his credit, seemed to understand that the panda was sacred, though he did occasionally give it a long, envious lick when no one was looking.

My highly questionable medical advice

When you tell people you've a large working dog puppy and twin toddlers, they look at you with a mixture of pity and genuine concern for your mental health. My paediatrician, a lovely woman who always looks slightly alarmed when I walk into her office, asked about the dog during the girls' two-year check-up.

She said something complicated about zoonotic diseases and immune systems, and mentioned that a dog's mouth is full of bacteria, which I'm fairly certain I already knew because I've seen him eat a dead pigeon. She suggested I keep their play areas strictly separated to avoid any cross-contamination. I nodded sagely, completely agreeing with her medical expertise, while actively suppressing the memory of watching one of the twins lovingly share a soggy rice cake with the dog that very morning.

A dog trainer I found on YouTube mentioned a critical twelve-week socialisation window, suggesting that if I didn't introduce the puppy to hundreds of different people, loud noises, and bizarre situations immediately, he would grow up to be a nervous wreck who barks at plastic bags. I tried to explain to the YouTube video that living in our house is a bizarre situation in itself. Between the girls screaming to the soundtrack of Encanto and the constant crash of wooden blocks hitting the floor, I figured the dog was getting plenty of desensitisation to chaos.

If you're also trapped in a house with screaming children and need distractions, you might want to look at our collection of wooden baby toys and gear here.

Drool, fur, and the endless laundry cycle

By month three, the dog was the size of a small horse and shedding like he was being paid by the hair. Our house was coated in a fine layer of black and tan fur that somehow managed to weave itself into the fabric of reality. I stopped wearing black trousers. I stopped wearing trousers without dog hair on them entirely.

Getting the girls dressed became an exercise in futility. I’d wrestle them into clean clothes, and within thirty seconds, the dog would come over, give them an affectionately slobbery greeting, and instantly coat them in drool and fur.

We had bought a few of the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesies from Kianao. Look, it's a perfectly fine bodysuit. The organic cotton is lovely and soft, and it does wash incredibly well, which is vital when you're washing dog saliva out of it on a daily basis. But let's be utterly frank here: it's sleeveless. We live in London. A sleeveless bodysuit in a draughty Victorian terrace is hopelessly optimistic for about eleven months of the year. I ended up having to layer cardigans over them anyway, which just gave the dog more fabric to accidentally catch with his teeth when he was trying to play.

Establishing the demilitarised zone

It became overwhelmingly clear that if we didn't establish some sort of boundary, someone was going to get sat on. German shepherds are exceptionally clumsy until they're about three years old. They have absolutely no spatial awareness, operating under the assumption that they're still the size of a guinea pig even when they weigh thirty kilos.

So, we built the wall. Or rather, we installed a series of aggressively sturdy baby gates that segmented our open-plan living room into zones. One side was the dog's sanctuary, where his crate and water bowl lived. The other side was the baby safe zone, where tiny fingers were protected from massive paws.

The centrepiece of the safe zone was the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set. This was, without exaggeration, my favourite thing in the house. It’s an incredibly sturdy wooden A-frame with these beautifully subtle, earth-toned animal toys hanging from it. When things got too much—when the dog was barking at the postman and one twin was crying because the other twin looked at her funny—I'd lay them down under this play gym.

It was magical. They would just stare up at the little wooden elephant, entirely captivated, reaching out with chubby little hands to bat at the geometric shapes. And the best part? The dog respected the baby gate. He would sit solemnly on his side of the metal bars, staring through at the girls under their play gym, watching them with the intense, unblinking focus of a security guard who isn't entirely sure what he's guarding, but takes the job very seriously anyway.

The slow descent into a weird, furry peace

We're a year into this experiment now. I wouldn't say things are calm, because calm is a myth sold to parents in glossy magazines. But we've reached a sort of operational equilibrium. The herding instinct has mostly morphed into a protective hover. The dog no longer tries to bite their ankles; instead, he follows them from room to room, placing himself between them and the front door, just in case.

The twins have learned that the dog is not a bouncy castle, and they mostly refrain from trying to ride him. In return, he allows them to use him as a heated, very hairy pillow while they watch Peppa Pig. Watching my daughters curl up against the chest of this massive, powerful animal, I occasionally think we might have done something right amid the absolute chaos of it all.

Or maybe the dog is just too tired to move. Either way, I'll take it.

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Questions I frequently get asked while looking tired

Is it actually safe to have a big working dog around babies?
Honestly, it depends entirely on the dog, the parents, and how much supervision you're willing to commit to. My vet told me that supervision doesn't mean being in the same house; it means having your eyes on them constantly. We never, ever leave them alone in a room together. It’s exhausting, but you absolutely can't trust a toddler not to poke a sleeping dog in the eye, and you can't trust a dog not to react like a dog.

How do you stop the dog from destroying the baby toys?
You don't. You just accept a certain casualty rate. I've thrown away countless plastic blocks with teeth marks in them. The only thing that sort of works is giving the dog incredibly high-value alternatives, like frozen Kongs or massive yak chews, and keeping the really nice baby gear (like the wooden play gym) strictly behind closed doors or baby gates.

Did the dog get jealous of the twins?
Not really jealous, just profoundly confused. He seemed to view them as terribly defective puppies that smelled like milk and screamed too much. We made a massive point of giving him one-on-one time when the girls were napping, which usually involved me throwing a muddy tennis ball in the rain while crying softly about how tired I was.

What’s the hardest part about managing both?
The sickness crossover. When the twins get a stomach bug, it's horrific. When the dog gets a stomach bug, it's a biohazard. When they all get a stomach bug in the same 48-hour window, you seriously consider setting the house on fire and walking into the sea. Also, the constant sweeping. The sweeping never, ever stops.