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The Heat is On: Pressure to Add a Family Member

The Heat is On: Pressure to Add a Family Member

Dog lovers who can’t turn their backs on a dog in need, are regularly faced with this pressure. I am not talking about saying yes to every dog in need. I am talking about people who foster dogs for rescues or shelters and/or people who take in dogs they find wandering the streets.

Post a dog on Facebook that you have found, while you are trying to locate the owners and you will get the inevitable suggestion to keep the dog, when efforts to find the owner are not immediately rewarding. The commenters mean well and they use smiley faces to soften their pressure. But pressure it is. Phrases such as “it’s meant to be” and “you found him for a reason” are intrusive and assuming. Assuming because the person applying the pressure presumes to know better than the person who is not yet ready to add to their household.

The same phrases can be found on threads with photos of foster dogs. Fostering saves lives. If foster homes kept every dog that they foster, they typically can’t foster any longer. Foster failures are not a bad thing. Most people who have fostered have experienced a foster failure. Sometimes it is meant to be. But most times, it isn’t. The foster home is just a step along the path. It’s a very important and often life sustaining step, but a step nevertheless. It’s a wonderful thing.

Giving the resident dogs a break.

Giving the resident dogs a break.

Equally wonderful is taking the time to capture a lost dog or a stray in need. Some people will find a new addition to their household by doing this, when the dog in question is indeed a stray. That becomes a joyous occasion for all involved. But it’s just as joyous when the lost dog gets reunited with his or her family of the stray finds the perfect forever home, once in safety.

There is no shame in not being ready to be the last step on their journey. Only the humans and the other canines/animals in the home can properly make that decision. Others can’t make it for them. It’s very stressful to be pressured like that. Pressure can make some people make decisions that are not right for them. That helps no one.

It’s okay to be selfish in these cases. You have to be comfortable with your decisions. Don’t allow pressure from others to make up your mind about whether you add another canine member or not. Be true to yourself and what you can handle. Don’t let outsiders sour you on helping in your own way. Every little bit helps. It’s a wonderful thing to help an animal in need expecting nothing in return but the happiness in your soul. Don’t allow pie in the sky outsiders who have no concept of your situation to cause turmoil inside of you or sway you from playing your part in an animal’s journey. Play the part you want to play and be proud of what you have done. You deserve it.

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Executive Decisions: Why Do You Have to Parent Your Crew?

Executive Decisions: Why Do You Have to Parent Your Crew?

Frequently, I walk into multiple dog households that are running amok, for lack of a better term. Some just a little, some far more than a little. In many cases, my presence would have been mostly unnecessary if someone had stepped in as the decision maker right off the bat. Simply put, stepping in as needed assures the safety of all your dogs.

Many of you, who are also human parents, understand the need for creating and enforcing boundaries. Fairness and polite behavior towards siblings is important for human harmony in a family. The same thing applies to the canine members as well.

This is not an advisory to micromanage your dogs’ interactions. A comment to this effect on the How Many Dogs Facebook page brought up this important point. Intervening is a judgment call in some cases. For what can be considered small things, no intervention is necessary if your dogs generally get along well. An example of this is a dog objecting to being stepped on by another dog, by grumbling or barking but nothing further. As long as the clumsy one is not inclined to redirect, that is a perfectly normal interaction between family members.

Parenting Your CrewHumans object to being jostled too, usually by reminding the jostler to be more careful. Dogs get this same privilege provided they can be reasonably polite about it. The key point here is to know your crew. If there are issues, you need to intervene far more often in order to prevent bigger problems.

Do not let your dogs work it out on their own! Not most of the time anyway. Really, the implications of such a scenario boggle the minds of behavior experts. It’s a recipe for disaster, just as allowing one’s human children to make inappropriate decisions regarding their interactions with their siblings. Oh sure, if you “raise them right”, some decisions will be appropriate. But so many more won’t be without initial supervision, intervention and consistency.

Consistency is the key word here. Set an example, make it happen all the time with few deviations, and you have a guideline for success. It doesn’t mean that you need to run your household like a boot camp. Nor does it mean that force needs used to ensure compliance. The best human parents don’t scream, shout and/or hit to handle their children’s infractions. They use conversations that include wise words and non scary but effective consequences for poor choices. But intervene they do, and because of that, the entire family feels a sense of security that all members are properly cared for emotionally and physically.

Will you always have to intervene? That depends on your particular crew and their relationships, but the goal is that you have to intervene as little as possible eventually – aside from preventing furniture from flying due to playtime bursts in the wrong rooms!

Security is one of the most important issues to any life form. Feeling secure allows everyone to relax. Safety from emotional and physical assaults ensures security. Give your crew security early on and you create the right formula to prevent problems later on. Combine safety and security with teaching manners and impulse control and you will put a lot of behavior consultants out of business!

Feel free to use the spaces below to describe how you create safety within your crew.

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