Bonding With Your Rescue Dog

Waiting For His Appetite To Return

It’s very normal for a rescue dog to lose their appetite for a week or so, after all, their whole world has been turned upside down. 

But as they start to relax and feel more at home, the dog’s appetite should return and then you can start to use all their food up in bonding games. 

We reached this point with Reggie towards the end of the second week. And I began to play some focus games with him. Training with food is a lot of fun, and I started by reinforcing eye contact. 

First Game: Reinforcing Eye Contact

In this game, you simply drop a treat on the floor, walk a couple of steps and drop another treat. Drop 4 or 5 treats in this way then stand still and look at the dog. 

They will look up at you to try to figure out why the flow of treats has been interrupted and that is when you give them a signal to mark the moment they made eye contact with you. 

Trainers call this kind of signal an ‘event marker’. I usually use the word YES in situations like this. But a click from a clicker, also works well. Follow your signal with a treat. Throw the treat so that the dog moves away from you to collect it and wait for them to come back and give you eye contact again.

Using An Event Marker

Think of your event marker as a promise to your dog. A promise that you will provide some tasty food, or something else the dog likes very much, within the next few seconds. 

Once you have used your event  marker, you must deliver the reward. Used regularly, these rewards will give the event marker the power to make your dog feel good next time they hear it. 

This gives you a great way to let your dog know when they are behaving in a way that pleases you. And encourages them to repeat that behavior

Bonding Through Training 

When Reggie first came to us, he appeared to have no concept of using eye contact to get a reward, but he caught on really quickly once his appetite had returned and I was able to start thinking about training. 

Most rescue dogs have some behavioral issues or holes in their training, and once you are able to capture the dog’s attention, you can start addressing those. 

Modern training using games and food is a great way to deepen that new bond between you, and its worth thinking about what you’d like to work on with your new dog, and allocate a few minutes each day to some training. 

Recall and leash walking

Reggie is a pretty well behaved little guy. He is quiet, clean in the house, and happy to spend time in a crate if necessary. We crated him for the first couple of nights, and since then he has slept with our Labrador in our utility room.

The main problem with Reggie seems to be a lack of any obedience training. He appears to have no recall, and pulls like a train on the leash. The pulling can wait for now as he is so small. But the recall needs attention as without it, we won’t be able to let him off the lead outside of our property.

Restricting Access

You’ll notice in the beginning of this article that I said I had restricted Reggie to two rooms in our house to begin with. Restricting a rescue dog to the room or rooms that you spend most of your time in, is a good idea for a number of reasons. 

In particular, it helps the dog become familiar with your presence, prevents the dog getting into mischief, and reduces the risk of toileting accidents which are common when a dog is distressed and in a strange environment. 

We also put Reggie on a long line (training leash) for the first 24 hours so that we could control him in the event of a problem such as chasing our cat or attacking the other dogs. 

In Reggie’s case it soon became clear that the line wasn’t necessary but when a dog is a completely unknown quantity, a long line can be very helpful. 

Be Patient

If you left your dog in boarding kennels for a fortnight while you went on vacation, you wouldn’t expect the dog to transfer their bond from you to the kennel maid during that time. Yet people often expect a rescue dog to have bonded with them in a week or two. 

In practice, it can take months to build a really strong bond, but that doesn’t mean the two of you can’t be friends in the meantime. Be patient with your new friend. Spending time each day on training games will help that bond grow quickly and provide you both with a lot of fun. 

Getting Help

If you’d like any help and support with training and bonding with your rescue dog, do join our Dogsnet Facebook group. We’d love to see you there!