Taking on an undomesticated young adult

[iloveeverykindofcat]

Starting this thread in the hope of tips and support from people who've adopted a young dog without much domestic experience! I think we're pretty much ready, but who knows what will come up.

We've always had corgis in my wider family and recently lost a young male to a rare genetic disease. It so happened that the local dog rescue has a young male corgi that badly needs a home. We met him yesterday and he's coming home in a week. He's a very exuberant, very long, very skinny, not very domesticated young man who needs training and learning to live indoors. He's quite charming, but presently gives the impression of something like a wild scraggly fox. No idea how a valuable dog like a young corgi ended up like this - possibly a dumped by a backyard breeder? He definitely needs neutering and will be done as soon as he's gained a bit of muscle and condition. We have a female corgi at home and they mostly got on fine, except he of course tried to mount her and she told him off. No violence, just warnings - neutering should end this. Otherwise they were quite happy together and even licked each other's faces.

Despite being underweight and in poor condition, he's very hyper and bouncy and desperate to run around and play, but of course has no leash training and no recall. The primary adopter (who lives around the corner from me) has a huge enclosed garden which is a good start.

Neutering probably won’t make any difference to trying to hump btw, it’s an over excitement behaviour not a sex one. Just so you know.

My dog was 5 months when I got him and had been in a shelter that entire time, so I can give you an idea of the things he found problematic, though obviously some might just be him or his age.

Stairs, he’d never seen them, couldn’t do them and was convinced they were evil, and he didn’t want to be left alone so I had to sleep downstairs until I could bribe him up all the stairs.

Things that make loud noises... washing machine, hoover, hair dryer etc. Those actually weren’t too bad, I think because I expected him to not know what they were so did them really gradually and made sure he knew it was me putting them on and off, not just that they make sudden noises. The hoover especially because so many dogs have an issue with it, I pretended to hoover with it turned off for about a week 😐😂 till he was not bothered by that, then spent time telling him I was turning it on and off... I mean, I’m absolutely not saying he understood me btw 🤣 just that because I was talking to him and very obviously OTT pressing the button he could see it was me making it do things not just some sudden thing. He’s totally unbothered bu all of those so it worked even if it sounds daft.

Tv, radio...on low and gradually, lots of pausing or turning things off because the noises scared him. The odd thing still freaks him out, men shouting, explosions, he’ll look for the barking dogs... but he’ll also happily watch dog tv for about half an hour, so it’s not all bad.

Reflective surfaces... took a long time to convince him they’re not other dogs.

Chewing, this might not be an issue for you as he’s older... but mine pretty much worked his way round the house systematically trying everything out for chewing potential, furniture, walls, the stone hearth 😐 just treated it like the big version of tiny puppy chewing and he’s pretty good now, though he has more stuff for him to chew on than most dogs, we have to be careful with his bedding and soft toys... and he will still steal paper to shred occasionally (he’s over 2 now)

The biggest issue we’ve had is that after coming home he developed a huge issue with other people coming in the house, that’s very probably to do with his background, but just to warn you that big things can suddenly crop up once they’re home.

I’d expect yours to possibly have an issue with food if it’s been a limited resource, so I’d be watching for stealing food, bins etc, but also from your other dog and resource guarding over food... obviously he might be fine, but they’d be what I’d be watching for.

My guess would be that he's come from a puppy farm, and was used (or intended for use) as a stud dog. It's very common for such dogs to be kept in large sheds and not to have seen much of the outside world.

MTAR specialises in these dogs and has some advice on their pages
www.manytearsrescue.org/adoption_advice.php

You'll find that the new dog will learn a lot from your existing dog (good and bad, but mostly good hopefully!) Often they get a lot of confidence from seeing that either dog isn't remotely worried about the washing machine, for instance.

Puppy farm seems likely. He is scared of loud noises but not dog noises. At the shelter the barking didn't bother him at all and he wanted to play with our dog right away but a metal gate clanging scared him. They estimated his age at 3 but I doubt it. He looks and acts more like 1.

I was assuming puppy farm as well tbh.

My dog is dog social, but not human social... apart from us. Just not completely convinced that the tv or reflective surfaces don’t in fact contain another dog to play with.

His age might be right, mine obviously had toys, enough food and his interactions with humans were positive, just limited and compared to a dog his age that had been in a house with people the entire time was... delayed? He acted in lots of ways more like a tiny puppy rather than an almost adolescent one.

I forgot cars, not just out and about, he wouldn’t even walk past mine on the drive - which is tricky if you need to go to the vet or use secure fields or anything like that, I spent lots of time just hanging out near the car with food then me in the car and him on a longline dog he could choose to come in for food or not and built from that.

That's interesting - I suppose its like children can be developmentally delayed without a stimulating environment, and probably the fact he's so skinny at the moment makes him look younger than he is. I felt like there was something almost 'naive' about him compared to most adult dogs. They're calling him Max at the shelter but he doesn't particularly respond to it - he looks interested and cocks his head at any encouraging noise, but the name doesn't particularly register. We're thinking of calling him Mab, a proper Welsh name, which means 'child' but also 'joy/funny'. I think he is a bit of a clown in personality.

“They're calling him Max at the shelter but he doesn't particularly respond to it - he looks interested and cocks his head at any encouraging noise, but the name doesn't particularly register.”

It won’t unless someone there has taken the time to train it... and he more than likely wasn’t called anything before 🙁

I changed mines to something completely different, he didn’t know it, he responded a bit to puppy because although the litter officially had names that’s what they were called most often 😂

I’ve changed rescues names before, it’s no different to teaching a puppy their name, say it, give treat... start using it, they work out it means “something” pretty quickly.

Admittedly I've been calling him 'scraggly fox boy' in my head but he might need a more dignified name for the future 😄

My rescue was 11 months approx. He learnt his new name within 2 weeks. We've had him 3 weeks now and he's very secure with it and also about 80% on sit, stay, wait, come here. He knows he is not allowed on furniture and apart from a couple of accidents, mostly because we had not picked up on his signals, has been house trained too.

Lol, mine is chewbarker in my head, but no-one in my house would agree to it, so he responds to a very boring normal dog name

Cal him Fox.

We adopted a one year old, she had been kept outdoors with lots of other dogs. She had a few weeks in a shelter before we got her and they did great work with toilet training etc but still not in a "domestic" setting.

It was obvious that she was not used to a house or to the outside world. She definitely hadn't dealt with stairs before but mastered them pretty quickly. Very apprehensive of the TV initially and thought that any animals on TV were real so would get nervous and bark and growl.

She wouldn't walk on the leash at all first. It took us a few weeks to get further than the end of our (quiet) road, she was so nervous of everything. She was scared of cars, terrified of bigger vehicles - wouldn't even walk past a parked van or jeep. She did not like travelling. She was ok one on one with another dog but extremely nervous around other dogs playing, she's very gentle and we're guessing that she may have been stuck outside with some more aggressive dogs who would fight. Her recall was non-existent.

The rescue recommended that we keep her in the house and back garden for the first couple of weeks and it was a good call, she was so unfamiliar with the world and getting used to us and a house was enough for her to be getting on with. After a while we did some training classes with her which were invaluable, lots of positive reinforcement with treats and it really helped build up trust which in turn helped with the leash and recall issues. We're 6 months in and she's now a very happy confident dog who gets excited when she sees her leash or knows she's going in the car, the only remaining sign of her background is a slight nervousness around other dogs playing but she now just looks to us for reassurance.

Best of luck with him!

Thank you 😊. Yeah they said to us keep him in the house and garden for a couple of weeks. We have a long training lead. @OrlandointheWilderness I would call him Fox but the rest of the family believe dogs should have 'proper' names (people names basically).

Oh I meant to add that when we first got her she wouldn't eat inside or eat out of a bowl. We did a combination of hand feeding and scatter feeding in the garden and would just leave a little bit of food in a bowl nearby while doing that, eventually she ate the bowl food too. We were lucky that she had no resource guarding issues, this was her only problem with feeding.

Ah @iloveeverykindofcat I must admit my sprocker is called Gary so I can't really talk.. 😂

My dog humped everything and everyone, he was neutered and the humping stopped completely. So not sure why you'd say this? Nothing else changed at all, the things/us that he humped at home are still here. The dogs at doggy daycare that he humped are still there.
So neutering made a massive difference to him.

@Veenah oh I hadn't thought of that! We fed him treats which he took one by one taking each to a corner before venturing back

Title reads like your new bf is moving in with you 🤣

Because it usually doesn’t make much difference, neutered dogs will still hump... even spayed bitches sometimes do as well.

I’m assuming he’ll be getting neutered anyway as a rescue, but it might be useful for the OP to know it’s just a pretty normal training issue.

He will most definitely be neutered. The rescue will do it as part of the adoption fee. We just want him to get a bit stronger first. He's healthy, just underfed and under-exercised, hence the scrawny fox look.

The more I write the more I reflect that he most likely has just been kept in a shed somewhere as a stud dog.

Update from the shelter: the scraggly fox has been scheduled for the snip on Tuesday, pending a vet check. This means his coming home date will be the Tuesday following. No more scraggly fox babies from him.

Be aware that after castration he may show signs of anxiety and nervousness due to lack of testosterone so do go gently with him.

Take things very slowly and let him adjust slowly. He will have had two major life changes eg new place to be and lack of hormones .

Going slower will mean you will get to the end goal quicker

No helpful advice as I have little experience of taking on a “undomesticated” dog but I am the proud owner of a corgi (cardigan my 3rd). I wonder which one yours is I’ve found the cardigans are clowns but I don’t think they are a popular breed with puppy farms only about 100 puppies are bred every year and these are by very dedicated to the breed breeders. We did have a Pembroke he seemed slightly sharper and a bit more buzzy. Both breeds are great dogs big dog personalities on short legs. My current cardigan came as an young adult he lived in a bungalow and had never done stairs he still struggled a bit and his default position is to jump the whole lot if it’s only 2-3.
I do hope it works out well for you can we have a photo when he’s home?

For sure. Probably many photos. They say he's a Cardi but he's red and white like a Pembroke so maybe a backyard breeder thought they would just call his offspring Pembrokes. His paws and legs look big compared to our Pembroke bitch, who is quite petite and compact. He'll be a substantially sized dog when he fills out a bit.

Cardigans are very substantial mine has huge feet and wears the same size collar as a GSD I struggle to lift him into the car and he's run up on the thin side. I might be wrong about this as I'm not expert but I thought cardigans have to be tri-coloured so mine is mainly black and white with brown on his face and blond bits on his tail/legs etc. The cardigan corgi community is pretty small in the UK they obviously have a breed club maybe they can help you find out about his origins.
They are KC rare breed I'm not sure why as they are great dogs everyone universally admires mine although they do spend a long time speculating what breed it is most assume a JR crossed with a border collie and are always surprised when I say corgi. Most people thing of the queens Pembroke's and comment on his tail (his finest asset) and his colour "I though corgis only came in ginger". In fact cardigans come in all colours and one of the few breeds where blue merle is actually permitted