ROAR Dog Training
Rescue Dogs
Often the misconception is that you will get a trained dog. However, this is not the Rescue’s responsibility. Their mission is to save as many lives as possible. Rescue Dogs are often desperately thrown into foster care volunteers, who with the best intentions, endeavour to provide a temporary home with warmth, support, food, love and some sort of training…to the best of their ability.
As altruistic as the mission to save lives is and get dogs into homes, unfortunately, some foster scenarios can be detrimental to the already traumatised dog…others can be fruitful and a true blessing for the recently rescued dog. In most rescue cases, the history of the dog is unknown, as well as any existing behaviour issues, or issues purely subsequent to the array of circumstances from which they were rescued.
When you get your rescue dog home, often they are still coming down. Once the safe space is established, rescue dogs can start to trust again, sometimes very slowly, sometimes quickly. Like all dogs, instinctively they will establish their role, which often due to our good-heartedness, unfortunately, does not provide enough structure and boundaries that rescue dogs (and all dogs) need. Our only fault is that we over care. Unfortunately, in a lot of circumstances with rescue dogs, too much of that is not balanced enough to provide appropriate rehabilitation.
Considering also there is often a lot to undo before we can start to do, train or modify behaviour. In a lot of circumstances, there is considerable change in behaviour, often in the form of reactivity. You may have heard of the ‘3-3-3’ rule with rescue dogs. Change in behaviour can happen at any time, though it is generally between the 3 weeks to 3 months period, after initially settling in. If left unchecked and untrained, it can result in detrimental outcomes. This is for both the misunderstood dog, who seeks leadership and structure and was not provided with such, which is subsequently returned to the rescue and the devastated family who tried to save a life.
By learning to understand the critical structure that is required for the rescue dog to thrive again, you can in fact achieve what you set out to do in the beginning. . . save a rescue dog’s life and have a wonderful addition to your family life. You are not alone, so many people go through this. You don’t know, what you don’t know. No one is to blame besides the pitiful people that previously handled the dog, before being rescued.
Reactive, Obedience, Adolescent, Rescue (ROAR) Dog Training are here.
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Let ROAR Dog Training guide you and your rescue dog to truly achieve the desired outcomes.
