How to assist your rescued dog in settling into your house.
Did you just adopt a shelter dog and they have a hard time adjusting to your home? When it comes to shelter dogs and bringing them home, you need to remember the three rules. It is the process that they go through to adjust in their new home, and it’s basically three days, three weeks, and three months. The first three days your rescue dog may be stressed, scared and overwhelmed. They may be completely shut down, they might hide under the table or beyond the couch, they may not eat, they may have toilet accidents. Those things are absolutely normal, dogs, shelter dogs especially, need time to adjust to new homes. You may not know all the things that your shelter dog has been through, which makes things a bit more complicated.
It is very important at this stage during the first three days to create a safe space for your shelter dog and if they want to stay there at all times, just let them be. The safe space can be a dog bed, a quiet room in your house, you shouldn’t use a cage or a crate, except if you leave the door open so that your dog can decide where they want to be. Let them decide what they want to do and where they want to be, give them plenty of quiet time, nearly ignore your shelter dog and give them the choice to be near you or not. Obviously if they want to be near you that’s fine, but if they choose not to just let them be. Let them decide, keep it very low key, do not over stimulate them and interact constantly with them. Just let them do what they want, don’t rush your dog into social situations, don’t invite people over to see your new dog but give them that time they really need to decompress. Do not overwhelm them with visitors, kids or walks. Wait before introducing new people, and if you really do have visitors, ideally try and keep your dog in a separate room. If it’s not possible, talk to your visitors and explain what’s going to happen: allow your dog to make the approach, give your dog the chance to actually sniff the visitors and step away if they want to, but do not force them. Ask your visitors to be very low key and not to stare at the dog but rather turn their body so it’s less confronting for your dog.
If your shelter dog is very stressed and nervous, the important thing during the first three days is to not take them out for walks just yet, but let them be comfortable inside your home first. After the three days, you come to the three weeks. Your shelter dog should start settling in, being more comfortable and getting used to the routine. They should start showing their personality, you may also start seeing behavior issues and they may try and push limits. The best thing you can do is actually to create a routine, because dogs are routine animals, and shelter dogs crave routine even more. Feed your dog every day at the same time, try to have a fixed nighttime and wake up time. If your dog is now confident enough to go for walks, try and go around the same time every day, do the same walk. Fixed schedule and routine will really help your shelter dog relax more and help them feel more confident. They will feel at ease in the world around them if there’s a lot of routine in it.
This is the time you should also start training your dog. Your rescue dog may have had some training before, but they could be used to completely different words, so the best is just to go back to basics and start from scratch. The first thing that you can actually teach to your shelter dog is a sit. It’s very fundamental to teach other skills, or prevent unwanted behavior. It can be very useful if your shelter dog is nervous when meeting people or other animals on walks if they are able to sit on command. Another very important thing to teach is eye contact, because shelter dogs can be very shy or scared due to traumatic past experiences, and teaching your shelter dog to check with you every time they are unsure will go a long way. Another thing that will help is to teach your shelter dog to settle: it can be on a mat, on a bed, in a crate. You just reward your shelter dog for doing nothing and just relaxing. You can emphasize that behavior by also giving them a natural treat when relaxing.
After three months, your shelter dog should have settled in, bonded with you, and started to trust you. Just remember the three rules are a guideline, each dog is different, so it might be longer for your shelter dog depending on what they went through, or even quicker. It really is a case-by-case story, but roughly around three months they would start to completely settle.