Paul J. Kearney’s Bringing Home Fido: 4 Rules for Happiness first appeared on Dogster. Copying entire articles is against copyright law. You may not know, but all of these items have been assigned, contracted, and paid for so they aren’t in the public domain. However, we’re glad you liked the article, and we’d love if you continued to just share the first paragraph of an article and then link the rest of the article on Dogster.com.
You have adopted a rescue dog. What now? Instead of starting training straight away, you concentrate on your emotional well-being and the fulfillment of your biological needs: food, water, shelter and a feeling of security in your new home without any pressure to perform. Here are some tips to focus on first before you start exercising.
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Get to know you
Rescue dogs come into our lives at different ages, with all sorts of previous experiences. Sometimes they know how to do a lot of things and sometimes nobody knows what they know. Shelters and rescue organizations do not always have all the information about an individual dog’s history; it’s actually pretty rare when they really do. This is why you should take this time to find out what the dog knows. Don’t be surprised if she hasn’t learned as much as she could have in her former home.
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Show her the potty!
You don’t want your new dog to search your entire house for the bathroom. Take the time to show her where to potty and help her learn to go there consistently by giving her several reinforcement opportunities.
For me, potty training is a numbers game. On average, an adult dog sleeps 14 hours a day. If we take the new bitch out every 30 minutes, she is awake, which leaves us 20 proactive ways to understand the desired behavior of her going to the bathroom outside. The recording is prepared in order to mark and reinforce a naturally occurring or freely given behavior. Going to the toilet is a natural act, so tracking is a simple, effective, and ideal way to reinforce desired toilet behavior. Wherever we intensify this behavior the most, she will likely go potty in the future.
All we have to do to understand where our dog should go to the bathroom is:
- Prepare for something the dog likes to be reinforced with
- Mark the behavior when she finishes going to the toilet with a verbal cue / marker. I use the words “hurry up” while others say “go potty”. Whatever you choose, say this verbal cue when your dog has gone to the bathroom, then reinforce it with a reward. The reward should be something tangible that your dog will enjoy, like a food reward.
If your dog goes to the bathroom where he shouldn’t go, don’t mark him with any form of punishment – not even 1%. Your dog will not associate anything you do with their potty faux pas, making it counterproductive to learning. Dogs don’t understand scolding. Dogs understand reinforcement, so focus on the behavior you want to help them learn and maintain.
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Obtain touch consent
The likelihood that a newly rescued dog will enjoy being hugged is slim. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen photos of recently rescued dogs being held and hugged, showing signs that they wanted to avoid the situation. Nobody should be enabled to react negatively, either physically or emotionally. Hugging is a very human thing, but it’s not a behavior that dogs often do.
When dogs hug, it is an interaction that is observed more often during dog predatory game than dog social game. The hug behavior between dogs is when both dogs are standing on their hind legs with their front legs wrapped around the other’s shoulders. Most of the time they also gape, which in this position is a wide open mouth with teeth bared.
At other times, two dogs can seek solace by lying next to or on top of each other, as if their head is resting on another part of a dog that they like to be around with. Most people wouldn’t want to be in the middle of the first behavior. For the second, I imagine some people think that lying with a dog like this might be a good idea, too. While some dogs like this, not all dogs will and we don’t know if brand new dogs like it or not. Every dog is an individual.
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Create a routine
We help dogs adapt to their new environment by providing them with basic needs and routine. Simple and basic things in life like eating a healthy diet and feeding them regularly (breakfast at 8 a.m. and dinner at 4 p.m.) and giving them a safe place to sleep. Setting up a sleeping area for your dog is a great proactive idea. Then adjust this position based on where your dog ultimately likes to sleep. Bedtime is a big deal for our dogs and ourselves too. I know everyone has different schedules, so keep this in mind: when we go to sleep at 10 p.m., our dogs get used to for an extended period of time, and that routine is part of life that we sometimes don’t consider.
Schedule regular game times, such as B. a round of tug or some fun with a flirting bar an hour after dinner. An ordinary stroll before work, like a 15-minute sniffari in the morning followed by breakfast, could be a wonderful new routine. Go outside and gather information, come back in, eat, and maybe some quiet time afterwards.
Any type of routine that works in your life that your dog can look forward to and rely on at the usual times is a great way to let him know that he is being taken care of. She will expect to spend this time together with you, and it will make a huge difference and bring a sense of order into her life that may have been missing before it came into yours.
Establishing some routines with things that normally happen at certain times will help your dog predict what is most likely to happen so he can be confident of what and when those things will happen. Routines go a long way towards building trust. Reliability is one of the most important things we can offer our dogs, especially dogs that have come from a potentially unreliable environment.
Bringing home a rescued dog is a beautiful thing. The phrase “I didn’t save him, he saved me” is a feeling many of us share. Training can take place at any time in a dog’s life, but what I think should always come first, especially with recently rescued dogs, is ensuring their emotional well-being and the fulfillment of their biological needs.
Feeling safe, having their needs met and people they can rely on can only make a dog’s life better. Improving a dog’s living conditions is a big reason we are saving him. a side effect of this is that they in turn improve our lives.
Paul J. Kearney’s Bringing Home Fido: 4 Rules for Happiness first appeared on Dogster. Copying entire articles is against copyright law. You may not know, but all of these items have been assigned, contracted, and paid for so they aren’t in the public domain. However, we’re glad you liked the article, and we’d love if you continued to just share the first paragraph of an article and then link the rest of the article on Dogster.com.
