The first week with a rescue dog, and what not to worry about

The dog you bring home is not the dog you are going to have. That is the single most useful thing to know in week one, and it cuts both ways.

Some arrive shut down — flat, silent, sleeping eighteen hours, showing almost no personality. Others arrive delightful, and six weeks later start guarding the sofa. Neither is the real animal yet. Both are normal.

Do less than you want to#

The instinct is to make up for lost time. Meet the family, meet the other dogs, long walk, warm bath, new toys, everyone round to see him.

Almost all of it can wait. A useful first week has fewer things in it than you think: quiet house, a bed somewhere they can see the room, short lead walks nearby, and largely being left alone to sleep. Sleep is not sadness. It is a nervous system catching up.

The rough shape people in rescue use is three days, three weeks, three months. Three days to stop being terrified. Three weeks to learn the routine and start showing you who they are. Three months before somewhere feels like theirs. It is not a law, but it sets expectations at roughly the right place — and it stops people concluding at day five that it isn't working.

The mistake that loses dogs#

This is the part worth being slightly frightening about.

The highest risk of losing a rescue dog is in the first few days, and it usually happens the same way: something startles them, they back out of a collar, and they run. A frightened dog in an unfamiliar place does not come back when called, because your voice means nothing to them yet.

So for the first week or two:

• A properly fitted harness and a collar, and clip the lead to both.
• No off-lead. Not in a quiet field, not "just to see". Recall does not exist yet.
• Check the garden fence at dog height, including the gaps you would not fit through, and the gate latch.
• Somebody's hand on the lead every time an outside door opens.

Boring, and it is the advice that keeps dogs alive.

Four things worth doing straight away#

Move the microchip registration to you. Not to the shelter, not to the previous owner — you, with your current telephone number. A chip that leads to a disconnected number is a chip that does nothing, and this is the single most commonly skipped step in the whole process. Ask the shelter which database it is on.

A photograph you would actually use. Clear, plain, whole dog, showing their markings. Take it in the first week, while you are still thinking about it, and keep it where you could find it in a hurry.

A vet visit, even for a healthy-looking dog. Not because something is wrong, but to record a starting point: a weight, a rough age, what vaccinations exist and when they are due, whether they are neutered, and a parasite check. Shelter paperwork is often thin, sometimes wrong, and occasionally about a different animal.

Write down the weight. It is the most useful single number you will ever have about a dog, and it is only useful as a series. A dog quietly losing weight over two months is one of the earliest signs that something is wrong, and it is invisible without a record.

Normal, in week one#

Things that alarm new adopters and usually should not:

• Not eating for a day or two, or eating ravenously and too fast.
• Loose stools. New water, new food, considerable stress.
• Toilet accidents indoors, including from a dog described as house-trained.
• Pacing, whining, or following you into every room.
• Hiding, or choosing a corner over the expensive bed.

Things worth a phone call the same day: not drinking at all, repeated vomiting, blood, laboured breathing, a dog who cannot settle at all and is not sleeping, or any limp that appears from nothing.

What changes in the second month#

Confidence arrives, and with it the behaviour the shelter could not show you. That is when the guarding, the reactivity on lead, the separation anxiety and the counter-surfing tend to appear. It is not a betrayal and it does not mean you were lied to. It means the dog has relaxed enough to have opinions.

That is also the point at which it is worth getting help, early and from someone who uses reward-based methods, rather than waiting to see whether it settles.

Keep the first week's notes#

Whatever you use — a notebook, your phone, mypet care — the reason to write any of this down is that in two months you will want to know what the weight was on day one, when the vaccination is actually due, and whether the limp is new.

Rescue paperwork arrives in fragments. Ten minutes putting it in one place, in the week you adopt, is worth an afternoon of hunting later.