Successfully Adopting a Rescue Dog. Can anyone around here speak dog?

[KurtNYC]

30. This article seems to be written for people who have never had a dog.

If someone has never had a dog and is interested in adopting I would recommend offering to walk a friend's dog and perhaps offering to sit a dog while they are out of town or at work. Spend a couple hours with dog in your home and assess your readiness and what you might need to do to make your home safer for a new dog -- think about what can be chewed, potential hazards. Prevent the event. Owning a dog is a big commitment and should be for the life of the dog. Many people rush into dog ownership thinking that you just pay the adoption fee and then feed them extra table scraps. Truth is you should be ready for vet bills and invest in higher quality dog food to prevent health issues.

If you have owned a dog before then you may want to focus on a specific breed. There are organization that rescue and foster specific breeds.

I would add one thing to the article which is beyond "exercise" and "leadership" which you can easily supply, a rescue may have issues and phobias related to how it was treated in the first 6 months or year of its life. Many very well meaning people create terrible behaviors in their dogs by rewarding, often without thinking it through, bad behaviors. Many people love to see a dog get VERY excited during every interaction. They really want the dog to just go crazy when they come home, when they feed it, when they are about to walk it, etc. An excited dog is an unmanageable dog so beware of "help" from these 'dog lovers.' In my experience they will also want to feed your dog treats -- be very careful here because EVERY time someone feeds a dog they are training it. The dog will remember and repeat whatever behavior it was doing right before it got fed. Also: Don't use food to stop a bad behavior such as barking, fighting or being overly excited.

If you have a choice, seek help or advice from someone with a well behaved dog or from a rescue group who specializes in the breed or one of the breeds in the mix.

And if you have ever rescued a dog, this video is for you...