OUR EXPERIENCE OF ADOPTING AN ADULT DOG WHO WAS ABANDONED BY HIS PREVIOUS FAMILY.

 Hello readers,

Let me quickly give you a little background story so that you know where I come from and why I am writing this topic extremely important to me.

I have always wanted a pet from a very young age. Not just a dog but any pet for that matter and I was never allowed to have one. The reason being ( which now strikes to me like a very obvious reason and a fair one). Had we gotten a pet back then my mother would've been involuntarily stuck to taking care of it because my brother and I were in school and if not that then busy with our homework which would've left us with no time to take care of the animal and I am a person with a weak gag reflex and I would've ended up puking most of the time if the pet even pooped in front of me.  (I'll be honest Not much has changed in that department)

Although a lot has changed over the course of time. I had friends who had dogs at the time so that let me have some time with them, understanding that having a pet is a huge responsibility. They have their own personalities and they aren't just toys for your amusement.

Kaustubh had 3 dogs and I was stoked to be around them because I have never lived with them. So it was a very exciting thing for me, it still is. But over the period of a year, I realized that you have a lot of responsibility if you are a dog parent. For starters you have to feed them on time, they'll eat trash from outside and you have to control that from happening, you have to take them to the vet from time to time for health checkups, you have to keep an eye on them and see if they do something different than usual, you have to take them on walks, and bathe them. 

Someone has rightly said raising a dog is like raising a toddler. You always gotta keep an eye open. 

Now the dogs kaustubh already had are all indie breed which means they are much stronger and rougher than the other ones. They are well adjusted to the streets if they were born on one and they know how to protect themselves. So we never had to really do anything more than feeding the three indie dogs and take them to the vet from time to time. 

Last year after we got back from our trip we had a surprise visit from a very strange looking dog. 

The dog seemed like he belonged to a good family but its condition was of a dog who has A) either lost his way and doesn't know how to go back to his home or B) has been abandoned by his family.

If I had a dog and he was lost I would turn the world upside down and hunt for him every place and in a city like Nagpur, I could've easily used social media and numerous NGOs who work day and night for the wellbeing of animals to help me find my child. And with this point we scratched the possibility of point A) and stuck with the latter one. Abandoning your pet is the most heartless thing to do? And I do not, to this day understand how can anyone do. but we still kept looking for his family.

So we took this dog in and let him rest and gave him food because he looked very weak and anemic. 

We decided to use the help of social media to find his family. We couldn't really wrap our heads around the idea of him being abandoned. 

He was so shabby from living on the streets for so long that we had to bathe him. Now for a dog who has been on the streets for a very long time, he was pretty chill with kaustubh bathing him. He hated bathing much like most of the dogs I know. We had to keep him inside our home because the other dogs weren't really happy with this new guest and so he had to fight for a couple of months to get accepted. 

Now for a person who has never been a dog parent watching dogs fight was the scariest scene ever. I love dogs, I really do but when they make that disgusting face where you can see their gums, oh boy! I can never get used to that side of dogs.

Needless to say, he also had to fight a lot of the dogs in our area because they weren't happy with his presence either. I used to get very emotional after every time he got into a fight because he was very weak then so he had to take a lot of beating without being able to hit back. So I almost every time felt like crying because he couldn't tell me where it hurt or how he felt. Or talk about where he is from, and was he abandoned or did he lose his way back home.

After two failed attempts of giving him to a better home, we finally decided that he is not going anywhere and he is a part of our family now.

If you want to know about that in detail then here is the link to that video. 

The one where we tried to give him up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4jqRTG34EQ

the one where we just couldn't 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3n5j5uohiU&t=11s

I personally could not, I still remember the day we were putting stuff in our car and wrin hopped on to the back seat. I just bawled my eyes out because I saw it in his eyes how he did not fully understand what was going on or where we were taking him but he trusted us to keep him safe and with us wherever we go. The entire ride to Pune was a nightmare for kaustubh and me. 

Adult dogs are a bit different they have already gone past the stage where everything could be easily taught to them. Adult dogs more often than not come with a set of traumas with them. The trauma of being left by their family, of being abandoned by their loved one and trauma of losing their way back home.

Wrin had a case of severe separation anxiety so we had to go through a period where he would get very disturbed even if we left him for an hour. He would be so flustered when we got back home and couldn't contain his feelings when he saw us back. Over the period of a year, he has finally understood that we go out to only come back to him. Be it for an hour or for a two-day trip. we always come back. And even though he knows this by now he still sits by the door waiting for us. 

Among the 4 dogs we have, he is the only one who does this for us. He always looks calm and happy when he is around Kaustubh and me.  Every time we come back from outside he has a routine of complaining and scolding us for leaving him behind. It is the cutest thing ever.

here are the things that I have learned and you probably should know before you adopt an abandoned adult dog:

1. I can not stress enough on this point and I hope you understand the importance of this point. Adopting an adult dog who has been abandoned by their previous home is a process. It's not like adopting a puppy. You have to be very patient.
2. You have to understand where they've come from they had to fight for food, shelter so if he shows signs of being territorial that is because of his past. You have to either train him yourself or hire a trainer for that. ( We faced a problem where he would get angry when we'd go near him while he was eating but now he doesn't, he is okay with us touching his bowl even when he is eating because he has understood that we are giving him food and we won't take it for him. he gets it every day. although we are still working on it because he does get angry when we give him bones and go near him while he is eating it. our logically reasoning to this was that we give him bones very rarely so he takes it as a rare treat that he is very possessive about)
3. Much like with an adult human you will have to help him get over his trauma before anything.
4. you have to accept him with all his flaws because there might be many.
5. Hitting a dog or harming him in any way is not a good method of teaching him anything.
6. If you have people coming over to your home who are scared of dogs please consider your dog as well as the other person and not just the person because the more you treat the dog as a threat the more he will feel hostile towards others and might just do something that you do not wish him to do. Dogs have a very strong sense of understanding of feelings. So if you treat him a certain way he will always remember that treatment.
7. Introduce the dog to every family member, make him feel at home, and a part of your family.
8. He is new so we won't know all his quirks and what really sets him off so before doing anything be cautious. ( for a while we never understood why he'd bark when our help came only to later realize that he has probably encountered something in his past which probably had something related to house help so he is never okay with them. We asked our help to always call him by his name and give him treats which have helped him get comfortable now)
9. You will have to check with your vet for everything that he needs and help him get all the nutrition that is required to keep him healthy.
10.  YOU HAVE TO BE EXTREMELY PATIENT. PLEASE DO NOT ADOPT AN ADULT DOG OR ANY DOG FOR THAT MATTER IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO TAKE CARE OF THEM.

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I'd love to hear your stories too. :)