Adopting from abroad

[100milesanhour]

Has anyone adopted a dog from abroad?

This is going to sound ridiculous but how did you get over the language barrier (if there was one)

Was it easy for the dog to learn English commands?

Thanks

We got an untrained, 6 month old puppy from Romania. We learnt how to say 'good girl' in Romanian and said that to her to make her feel at home (no idea if it worked and made us sound slightly odd!!) we also said 'good girl' in English and now rarely use the Romanian version.

As far as training went, we used English from the start and if we used enough tasty treats she understood us without any problems at all. She is incredibly clever and adaptable - when she doesn't do as she's asked it's definitely due to her having more exciting things to do rather than a language barrier!

Enjoy your new dog!

Thank you so much for your advice.

We hopefully get him tomorrow, he's having a defracheck just now but will be complete tomorrow.

Dog number 4, let the chaos begin.

We have two English and one Romanian rescue. Our Rommie learned quickly, but was very nervous and had had some harsh treatment. But she's lovely and very settled now.

I think tone of voice and body language counts for much more than language.

Hope it has gone well for you.

Um, dogs don't speak English...

You'd have to retrain any dog to do what you want from a command as they wouldn't necessarily be what you'd want and they're random words as far as a dog is concerned, so it really makes no difference.

My dog knows some commands that mean literally nothing to do with the action, it makes no odds because all he knows is that I want him to do X when I say y.

So the original language your new dog wax taught in makes no difference as you'll need to train anyway.