We’re going to take a break today from our regularly scheduled marketing/writing program so I can put up a post for the Be The Change day that came out of Blogpaws. Anyone who knows me also knows that I’m an issues kind of woman, and this seemed like a really good opportunity to talk about some pet issues that I’m a big advocate of. So, if you’re not a pet person, feel free to skip (I promise I won’t be offended!).
There’s lots of talk these days about adopting animals from shelters instead of buying purebred pets. While I’m a big fan of that stance, I want to take it a step further and talk about why you should think about not only adopting a shelter dog, but an older one, as well as the reality of training and living with an adult rescue dog.
When I got Didy (illustrated above in the header), he was two years old. He’d spent a year and a half being abandoned and abused, and then been put in the back of the shelter for six months. When I met him, he’d pretty much stopped eating because of the shelter noise, and was very skittish and standoffish. I had a dog already at the time, a very cute black lab puppy, and didn’t really need another one. I adopted Didy because fundamentally, I felt that he needed saving or he might not make it.
While puppies have a pretty good chance of finding a home out of a shelter, the reality for older dogs is much less rosy. They’re frequently thrown in the back rooms of shelters where they aren’t seen, especially if they’re larger. They can have real issues if they’ve been abused or abandoned, and most people don’t want a dog with issues. They can get a bad reputation for being difficult and aggressive. If they’re lucky, they find a humane shelter that they can live in for the rest of their lives. Even the best outcome isn’t very satisfying in terms of quality of life.
As far as I’m concerned, the benefits to adopting an older dog are pretty much endless, as long as you’re prepared to deal with some of the issues that they come with as well. To start, you know what kind of dog you’re getting. Puppies are cute, but their personalities are pretty fluid. If you’re in the market for a certain dog personality, older dogs are the way to go.
Most of the time, they also don’t require as much training. Puppies can take almost a year to be reliably housetrained. Didy, with all of his issues, took about two days. Older dogs just get it.
Lots of older dogs have been abandoned and abused, but bizarrely, remember having a family. They value having a home, and a sense of safety in a way that a puppy doesn’t, and in some ways it makes them easier to train. They’re much more willing to meet you halfway when it comes to the difficult stuff, while puppies pretty much just do their own thing.
So what are the downsides? Well, frequently older dogs come from pretty traumatic backgrounds, and you’ll find yourself dealing with some strange behaviors at the beginning. Didy is very well trained, completely sweet and open, and still has a complete meltdown and panic attack whenever he sees a bike. There’s something in his background that triggers it, and I’m not sure that’s ever going to change. This can make life really awkward when we go to the park together, for instance, which is almost every day.
While you benefit from knowing a dog’s personality going in when you adopt an older dog, you also have to deal with the fact that unlike a puppy, there is probably only so much they will change for you. Training Didy was a learning process on both ends, because it was more like figuring out how to meet in the middle than training specific behaviors. It’s an ongoing process still, but one that is getting smoother as he opens up and becomes less nervous about trying new things.
Next time you walk in to a shelter, go check out the dogs in the back. They’re more intimidating to look at, but they’ll provide rewards that you can’t even imagine. I speak from experience.
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