Surviving the first week with your Fearful Rescue Dog

hi everybody this is joe cottrell from dog trouble and we rescue rehabilitate and rehome dogs uh in the uk and from greece and i support the rescues into kinthos uh healing pores anti-strays and zorf and sometimes we have some challenges with dogs that get re-homed directly from the shelter in greece uh that are really fearful or insecure or just shut down so what i thought i'd do is do a video on the first 24-48 hours and what's essential for you to do to enable your dog to just decompress and just get used to you guys so the first thing is you want to make sure that you've got a crate so they have a safe space to be in a crate or an area that is fairly quiet the second thing you want to do is make sure that you have a long line and just keep a long line on them for usually the first couple of weeks until they start to trust you until they start to follow you um and you're in a you're able to get a lead on them without them running away and hiding so i'm just going to take you through a typical scenario that we have where you might have a dog that's insecure or fearful and you're struggling to get them out of their crate or area take them outside for a wee struggling to get them on a lead even so i'm going to take you through some top tips and how i do that so that it will help you to not um overthink not worry and not kind of get stressed about is the dog okay i'm worried that they haven't gone to toilet i'm worried that they're not eating i'm worried that they're just staying in their crate the the most important thing to remember is is you know dogs will survive a number of days without eating as long as they drink they've got access to water but um you want to start just getting the dog to learn to trust you so the first thing we're going to do we're going to use maggie mae here so maggie has been with me about a year and she's fast asleep now um but maggie was one of those dogs that was really really fearful and she didn't know how to go on a lead she didn't want to come out of her crate um i literally had to pretty much drag her out into the garden and it took ages for her to go to toilet thank you chino it took ages for her to go to toilet and i had to often walk up and down the garden to get her to go to toilet enough lie down lie down good boy enough so i'm just going to show you how we do this so if you've got a dog that's just really shut down and fearful and isn't aggressive then you can go and put the lead on in their crate so i just use um a three meter long line and all i'm gonna do here is just make the loop nice and big and then we're just gonna slip it over her head and she's used to this now and make sure you just push that stopper all the way down because that's what keeps it around the neck now it's important to understand that when dogs are in a fearful state they're not going to take food so there's no point trying to coax them with food it's not going to work they're not going to be interested in food so all i'm going to do here is just stand slightly away from the kennel so i'll just show you from this angle and i'm just going to do a little pressure release technique so you can see i'm just going to tighten the lead come on maggie mae let's go and then release okay so i'm just going to do it in little motions come on maggie let's go and it will feel a little bit like you're dragging them come on maggie mae good girl and then as she gets up i'm just going to put some pressure on and release so you're not constantly putting pressure on the lead it's just pressure release good girl and then as soon as she gets up i'm gonna start walking okay and i'm not gonna interact with her i'm not gonna talk to her i'm not going to try and give her food the idea is that we just walk and she starts to follow all i'm doing is just walking away from her so you'll get a little bit of a shut down again come on maggie so just pressure release pressure release and then as soon as she unlocks you release that pressure and then all i'm doing is just walking around the garden and she's just following okay so i'm not talking to her i'm not trying to touch her i'm not interacting with her at all all i want her to do at the moment is just follow me come on maggie knee good girl good job good girl come on maggie so what maggie will do occasionally is she'll just sit down and she'll just put the brakes on let's go good girl maggie let's go so pressure release pressure release and just keep walking as soon as they release you've just got to keep walking and then i might just change my angle a little bit good girl good girl so i'm going to keep doing that until let's go until they go for a wee now if you've got a really secure garden and you've got to make sure it's secure because rescue dogs can get out through the tiniest of holes or the highest offenses then what you can do is you can just drop the long line and you can just walk away because quite often dogs that feel vulnerable will not eat they will not go to toilet so if you are within the vicinity of them they probably won't eat they probably won't go to toilet so what you can do is just drop the long line and you can see how she's following me now you can just drop the long line and walk away and then just keep an eye on whether they go to the toilet but don't panic if they don't because they might not for the first day or first two days and then what we're gonna do if she starts to run away from me i'm just gonna put my foot on the long line there we go and i'm not gonna give her eye contact i'm not gonna talk to her i'm not gonna touch her but i'm just calmly gonna let her go back into her kennel so you can see she goes into a little bit of flight so quite often they will accelerate back into their safe spot so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna leave the long line on her okay now if i've got a crate um then i can shut the door if i want to keep the dog in there i can just shut the door and leave the long line loose so when i come to open the door i can just pick up that long line and walk away again and off i go okay or you can leave the the door open if it's a dog that's really not going to come out um then what i've got here is i've got her water here and then what i will do is leave food in overnight because quite often dogs that have been in shelters abroad will eat overnight because it's quiet it's safe it's dark certainly when dogs come into your home they won't necessarily eat during the daytime particularly if you're around so just leave a bowl of food in their kennel in their crate overnight and hopefully they will eat but the key thing to remember is these dogs are used to being in an environment usually with other dogs so if you've got another dog in your household use that dog as a mentor as a teacher have that dog in the vicinity of of your new dog or if you've got friends with you know nice dogs get them to come round bring the dog round and just have the dog there because quite often it will help unlock your dog because they trust other dogs unless they've got a history of of you know not being sociable with dogs they trust other dogs so quite often if you've got other dogs around that dog will trust the other dogs and they will help that dog to come out a little bit and become more confident so if you've got another dog use another dog um you know bring them round into your house use them to help unlock unlock your new dog the the key thing is is not to overthink not to worry dogs are animals um they think differently to humans all they need in order to survive is to eat sleep and drink that's it so as long as they've got access to food and water quite often they need a week or two just to decompress because they've come out of a completely different environment into a new environment that quite often they've not experienced before so it takes sometimes a couple of weeks for them to completely decompress now if you've got a dog who is really shut down and even when you put a lead on them they're fighting the lead or they're just not moving at all then you're gonna have to go in and pick the dog up as long as that dog's safe to do so so you'll have to pick them up and then when you get outside you can pop a long line on them and then just walk them around the garden if they won't walk they just sit or lay down frozen then again just drop the long line if you've got a secure garden then they can just be out in the garden whilst you're in the vicinity but not right with them and just observe them um but you might have to do that as i say for the first couple of weeks with maggie i had to put her on a long line every time i wanted her to go to toilet and it took me sometimes 20 minutes for her to go to toilet and i was literally just walking around this garden going go weebs go wees and then i'd drop the long line and then i'd sort of you know look behind through the corner of my eye and i'd noticed that she'd be going to the toilet so don't get stressed all right they will be fine um but it just takes a long time okay all righty give us a shout if you need some help but hopefully that will be helpful and good luck it's worth it in the end these dogs need you to be patient to be calm to be consistent and they will come good in the end alrighty guys take care bye bye

Channel: Jo Cottrell - Dog Trouble

Views: 15,871

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Id: uFT343JHcq0

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021