Chapter 1: What should you know before adopting a shelter dog?
We're always told adopt, don't shop when it comes to getting a new pet. But bringing a shelter dog home can come with unexpected challenges, from separation anxiety to simply learning the rules of the house. Dog behaviourist Susie Walsh is here to give tips on everything for the first 24 hours to building trust and effective training methods. Susie, good morning to you.
Good morning. Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for joining us. I don't know whether this is an urban myth. Is a dog from a shelter more likely to have behavioural problems than a dog from a breeder?
They're actually not.
Chapter 2: How can you prepare your home for a new shelter dog?
There's actually no correlation between one or the other. And the current situation we have in Ireland, we don't have a great breeding plan or breeding profile in our country. So actually, in fact, it's just as risky to get a purchased dog unless you're really, really knowledgeable and you know what you're doing and you're going to a really credible source.
It's just as risky as if you get the dog from a shelter and actually a lot of shelters A lot of dog rescues are doing such great work assessing the dog before it even comes to your home. And a lot of them use a foster care system where the dog is living in a family home. So often you're even more guaranteed that that dog is going to be an easier bet than a dog from a breeder.
OK, well, any dog that you bring in, you're bringing them into a new environment. There may be initial anxiety. Can you prepare your home to try and minimise that?
Chapter 3: What common mistakes do new dog owners make?
Oh, 100%. You can set up your home and obviously keeping anything that might be valuable to you or you think that might be interesting to a dog that they'll want to destroy or they'll want to get at, keeping your home quite peaceful. And one or two pointers I would say is if you're going to bring a dog into your home, make sure you bring them early in the morning.
Make sure before you bring them in the car that they haven't eaten. Make sure that they have the entire day to get settled and more comfortable in your home environment. Keep everything quite minimal. Don't let too many guests, and I know everybody's excited when there's a new dog in the home,
But just try and keep the first kind of 72 hours pretty chill and pretty relaxed and try and get into a routine type scenario as soon as you possibly can. Don't concentrate on going on walks or training or obedience in the first few days because the dog will just want to decompress and kind of find their feet in their new home and in their new environment.
So just get used to them and don't put any pressure on the dog.
So is being overwhelmed the single biggest mistake people make, do you think?
Yeah I know because people get really excited and it's such an exciting time to bring home a dog to your family and you're trying to give them all of the things especially coming from a shelter where they mightn't have had everything and we try as humans to compensate for that and we might try to provide them with everything that they've never never had before in their lives but that can be a lot for a dog you know you're thinking about the mentality of a two or three year old child and it's very easy to overstimulate a two or three year old child so
The same goes for a dog.
Okay. And if people, if things don't click into place immediately, people sometimes start to panic, don't they?
They do panic because, you know, what we imagine in our heads isn't necessarily what happens in reality. It would be lovely if it was. But always remember, there'll be rescue or shelter or people like me on the phone for some advice and some help. And I never mind giving advice or help if someone has just had a dog arrive into their new home.
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Chapter 4: How should you handle training a newly adopted dog?
But the expectation and reality can sometimes be a little bit challenging for people.
And you were saying there, don't be rushing into training or obedience training with dogs.
Yeah, you need to build a relationship with the animal first. So they need to know, you know, find their feet with you. And sometimes we can go in a little bit strong and be trying to teach them everything all at once. You know, I kind of concentrate on house training. And one of my favorite things to do with a dog is to teach them to settle. So that's teaching them.
So like with yourself, David, I can tell you to lie down and that's great, but I can't tell you to relax.
and you know giving the tools to an animal to be able to relax so we're all very good at pointing out all the the things that dogs do wrong and all correcting for all the naughty things which is fine or giving them attention when they look for it which is also fine but what we tend to lack is giving them attention when they're being really really calm so if you see your dog lying down chilling out
not looking at you, just being really relaxed and you go, my God, isn't that wonderful? Then toss them a treat, you know, engage with them, you know, mark that behavior. If you spent a lot of time tossing a treat to a dog who's lying down and relaxed, that's the same as you sitting on the couch and being relaxed and me coming and giving you a chocolate biscuit.
You'd be sure, damn sure you'd be repeating that behavior. And so dogs are the same. You know me so well. They tend to go, oh. You'll tend to go, oh, the dog will go, oh, that was great. I got a treat for just chilling out here. And so your dog is going to do more and more of that practice.
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Chapter 5: What are the triggers for behavioral problems in shelter dogs?
Okay. What are the triggers for behavioral problems, do you think?
So everything, everything from being left alone too fast, everything from other dogs, new people, anything that's exciting for dogs, you know, anything can be, different breeds have different needs, you know, even getting into the car. Noises is a big thing. If you take a dog from a rural environment and they've never been in an urban environment anymore, that can be really overwhelming.
So they're hearing all these noises and seeing all these things that they've never seen before. So introducing them to those kind of experiences slowly will always help.
Yeah, because some dogs are very nervous around other dogs, which is a problem if you're taking them out on a walk.
Yeah, it's a huge problem, especially because we have a huge dog population. I live in Dublin, so there's dogs everywhere. So it's really hard to avoid those situations. So taking them out slowly and even doing exercises work. Every time they see a dog, they get a piece of chicken or every time they get a piece of cheese or something really tasty like that.
Dogs learn by association, so you can always change their emotional response to seeing things that they're not sure of or they don't really like.
Separation anxiety is a big one.
Separation anxiety is huge because we all have to work. We all have to leave our houses and dogs. We breed them as companion animals. And so they want to be around us all of the time. And that can be really, really difficult for them to learn to cope by themselves.
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Chapter 6: How can you help a dog with separation anxiety?
So you want to transition them into that slowly. You also, especially, we usually have medical causes for separation anxiety. That is really common. We approximate behaviour problems. About 83% of behaviour problems are caused by undiagnosed discomfort. in animals, pain and discomfort is really closely linked to behaviour problems. So you'd also want to get your dog or a vet check
You know, and even we have some dogs that in the first few weeks of settling in, they might even need medical help for anti-anxiety medication and things like that. But that's quite extreme. But transitioning them slowly is really important.
Yeah. So, I mean, as you say, people have to leave the house, they have to go and do the shopping, they have to go to work or whatever. So is it sort of gradually building up the idea that the dog knows you're going out, but you are going to come back?
Yeah, that's exactly it. So most dogs with separation anxiety don't believe that they go once you're out of sight, that you're not going to return. So it's not even, it's even smaller than that. And it's getting them used to you not being in the same room as them while you're still in the house, you know,
giving them something to do while you go pop in and out, basically playing peekaboo with your dog and building up the time slowly if you can. Some dogs are fine with it. Some dogs don't mind them at all.
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Chapter 7: What is the impact of punishment in dog training?
But some dogs find that separation just too much and that will cause them to howl and bark and that causes knock on complications then.
Absolutely. When it comes to training, some people punish dogs who misbehave. What's your view on that, particularly with rescue dogs?
Yeah, and it's funny because we grew up in a society where we punish people, but that's not necessarily effective either. So it's very, very hard to punish an animal that you can't talk to and you can't explain why you're punishing them. So generally it just causes confusion a lot of the time because our timing isn't often great.
So in order to punish a dog for a behavior, you'd have to do it in milliseconds and often we're too delayed in that and it gets lost in confusion. So you're far better off rewarding them for behavior you like and try and disengage or prevent them from behaviour you don't like by management until we get the rehearsed behaviour that we want.
But punishment is a very complicated thing when coming with dogs and often you'll just get a dog who ends up nervous of you or avoidant of you or even suppresses behaviour and that's how you often get bites and dog aggression emerging.
OK, we have a couple of texts in. One texter says, we tried for two years going to dog shelters, but every dog had issues, ended up having to buy a puppy who was brilliant. Another texter said, we tried to get a rescue dog from a shelter. We had one visit to see if our garden was OK. Everything was perfect. That's the last we heard from them.
No one ever came back to us, had no option to just buy, but to just buy a puppy from a breeder. So is there a shortage of dogs from shelters?
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Chapter 8: When should you consider rehoming a shelter dog?
I wouldn't have thought so.
There is, unfortunately not, but there is a shortage of regulation around shelters and most of the shelters are run by volunteers. We don't have a very good system here in Ireland. So you're usually liaising with, apart from the major charities, you're usually liaising with somebody who is doing it in part-time, spare time.
And because they're inundated, actually, in fact, it's not a case of they don't have enough dogs, but the case is they have too many dogs and too many dogs to be dealing with. and not enough people, and there are strict criteria around it, and they sometimes do come in with more complicated history, but not all rescues are equal either.
So you also need to check out your rescue, make sure your rescue that you're working with is, you know, has the capability of, you know, meeting your needs too.
Lovely text in from Christine. I got my dog from a dog shelter when he was nine months old. First night he slept in the kitchen. Second night he was sleeping on my bed and did so until I sadly had to put him to sleep after giving me 13 years of happiness. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Christine. He was nervous of men, except for my dad.
And after encouragement and letting him get to know the male members of my family, he became a confident dog. I would encourage anyone to adopt a dog, have patience, and you will reap the rewards in abundance. And by the sound of it, Susie, what Christine did there, gradually letting the dog get to know other men in her family, that's the way to do it, to build up confidence slowly.
Yeah, yeah, no, everything is slowly with a dog.
OK, and finally, I suppose at some point people might realise that the dog that they have got is just not compatible with them or they're not compatible with the dog. And that's a hard discussion to have, isn't it?
it's a really hard discussion but lifeless in hindsight if we all had that that would be amazing and sometimes we you know it just like any relationship it doesn't work out even if you try your very very best and often if you're unhappy with your dog often actually your dog is probably likely unhappy with the situation too and it's a sad sometimes that does happen but there are you know for the little things there are ways to fix it but sometimes it can be very overwhelming and it
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