Even if you’ve had your adopted dog for months, even years, you can start over and re-set your own behaviors, which will in turn re-set your adopted dog’s behaviors. One thing many pet owners don’t realize is that when dogs misbehave, it is usually a matter of a human’s failure to communicate. While I don’t mean to make dogs sound like computers, behavioral problems are largely a matter of user error.
Your dog wants to please you, in theory. Yet, if he doesn’t know how, or something other than pleasing you is more tempting, more rewarding, more delicious or chaseable, then you may find yourself losing the battle for your dog’s attention. But you can help your dog to want to please you, as well as to know how to please you, most of the time. (Hey, nobody’s perfect, and as I said, dogs aren’t computers.)
The most important thing you can do to help your adopted dog adjust to life in your household is to forge a relationship. That relationship will be the basis for everything else you do, and the trust it involves will be the basis for your dog’s desire to please you. It will also help you to be more understanding when your dog acts like, well…a dog, occasionally making a mistake or getting distracted or nibbling on the Thanksgiving turkey or waiting a few too many maddening seconds before coming when called.
When you and your dog have forged a relationship, you have a friendship. Sure, it’s an inter-species friendship, but it is a friendship nevertheless. Sometimes that friendship will seem more like a parent-child relationship and sometimes more like a teacher-student relationship, but it remains a relationship. You will (and probably already do) have a connection.Your valuable relationship will be worth preserving, and will give you even more of a reason to work through your challenges.
Excerpted from Your Outta Control Adopted Dog, Published by TFH Publications. Used with permission.
