Allow Your New Animal Companion Time to Adapt Upon Arriving at Your Home

Imagine leaving the only "home" you've ever had, be it a foster home, a shelter or your brothers and sisters. You know no one, you're lonely for your "family" and you're scared. Your stomach is queasy from stress because all these strange and sudden experiences are causing you to feel anxious. People touching you, picking you up, possibly even another being not too happy for you to be on their turf...all the chatter, the foreign scents, no "safe" place where you can gather your thoughts and settle down, if only for a minute. You're missing all the things that made you feel secure, all the routines that made you comfortable. It's feeling like you've been abandoned and now all these new people, places and things are overwhelming you to the point of fearful sensations surrounding you. Wouldn't you want to run screaming and begging to be comforted by the people, places and things you were unwittingly snatched from? Well, my friends, that's exactly how we feel when we are initially incorporated into your world. Please remember this before mounting your expectations onto our psyches. Don't give us lots of "treats"--in fact, don't even feed us anything solid since even the most confident of canines can experience tummy turbulence at first. (The same goes for an unexpected animal you may need to rescue--even if they're skeletal, approach the food issue blandly until you can get them to a veterinarian. If the animal is loaded with intestinal parasites, you'll be causing them severe gastrointestinal pain if you load them up with food. Instant mashed potatoes or cooked white rice is the gentlest, easiest thing for their compromised intestinal tract.) But, back to my earlier point, please help us to make a smooth transition from where we were to where you'll be bringing us to live for the rest of our life. Remember that dogs are inherent den dwellers and while being made to stay in a crate for extended periods of time is not what we signed up for, we do like a den-like environ to "get away from it all". We especially like our special spot to be dark, so consider putting some sort of material over our cubby, thereby increasing it's allure to us.