I've shared before that I volunteer at our local animal shelter to walk and provide enrichment to dogs on weekends. I think about my new friends all week long and monitor the shelter website several times a day to see who is still there and who is gone. When I first bond with a newbie I selfishly sometimes hope that they will still be there the following weekend so that we can hang out again. Right now, in June 2024, I don't feel like this anymore. Maybe it's just me, I don't have unbiased statistics, but my observation is that our dogs are staying in shelter longer and being returned after adoption at an alarming rate.
I think the ones I struggle with the most are when the adopters return their new family member only a day or two after arrival. I can't help but wonder what could have gone so horribly wrong in such a short time?
Of my three dogs we have two we got as 8-10 week old puppies (Lucy and Mr. Darcy) and one as a 9-10 month old rescue who we named "Churro". Our young puppies needed to be housetrained and we needed to put a lot of what we call "management" in place. This means only allowing the puppy into certain spaces, supervising 100% of the time, taking
them out to potty every few hours or even more often. We also had to invest hours up hours in teaching our dogs how to communicate with us through hand signals, other body language and verbal cues like "sit", "stay" and "down". Before we got our puppies we needed to have a plan to socialize them with the other people and animals in our lives. I could go on and on, but I won't bother because you probably already know these things and you are wondering where I am going with this!
My point is that, I think it's pretty rare for someone to not realize that a puppy needs to learn all of these things. I do think many people underestimate how much time and even money it may take...but they fall in love with that cute little baby and before they know it time has passed and either the puppy is trained or the puppy has trained them just to live with the things that don't always go well. OR, and this is a big one - they surrender their 1 to 2 year old "no longer a puppy" to the shelter because these things didn't happen.
If you decide you want to adopt a dog from the shelter, be prepared to give them ALL of the time, support and financial support that you would have needed to give a baby puppy. Set yourselves up for success by budgeting for some one on one private training either in-person or virtually. There are some excellent and world renowned online programs that with a membership give you access to highly qualified coaches.
Final thoughts:
DO give as much (or more) thought and planning to bringing home an adolescent or adult dog from the shelter as you would have a young puppy.
DO be prepared for inconveniences. Just because you haven't brought home a puppy it does not mean that they will understand where they are supposed to potty and that the couch is not a chew toy.
DO have a support system in place. This could be family members and/or a dog trainer....and definitely a Veterinarian.
DO go to my free resources section and download the pre-puppy planning and information pages I have created for you.
Comments