Rehoming an adult dog

Why this page exists

Most of the dogs we place are eight-week-old puppies. Occasionally we place an adult — a dog we have kept back and later decided not to run on, a dog returned to us by an owner whose circumstances changed, or a dog retiring from our breeding programme.

Taking on an adult dog is not the same as taking on a puppy, and the difference is not that it is easier. A puppy arrives with no history and forms its picture of the world in your house. An adult arrives having already formed that picture somewhere else, and has just had it taken away.

This page sets out honestly what the first few months look like, what the dog is experiencing, what to watch for, and what we need from you. Please read all of it before you commit. If any part of it makes you hesitate, that hesitation is useful information — tell us.

What the dog is actually going through

A dog being rehomed has lost everything at once. Not one thing: everything. The people, the house, the smells, the other dogs, the routine, the bed, the sounds of the street, the order in which the day happens. Dogs are creatures of pattern and place, and every pattern and every place has just been replaced without explanation and without the dog having any say in it.

Dogs do not understand that the move is permanent, or that it is meant kindly, or that you are their new person. For the first while they are simply somewhere unfamiliar, waiting to see what happens.

Shutdown looks like a well-behaved dog

The single most common misreading in the first week is this: the dog is quiet, calm, undemanding, doesn't put a foot wrong, and the new owner concludes they have got a wonderfully easy dog.

Usually they have got a shut-down dog.

A dog that is overwhelmed often does less, not more. It becomes still and watchful, it doesn't explore, it doesn't ask for anything, it doesn't play, it doesn't test any boundaries. It is not settled. It is waiting. As it begins to relax over the following weeks, the real dog emerges — and that dog has opinions, energy, preferences and habits that the quiet dog of week one did not show you.

This is why so many people report that their rehomed dog "changed" at the four to six week mark. The dog did not change. The dog arrived.

Grief and dislocation are real

Some dogs eat immediately and sleep well. Many do not. It is normal for a rehomed dog to refuse food for a day or two, to have loose stools for several days, to sleep either far too much or barely at all, and to appear flat.

Stress hormones do not clear quickly. After a single acute stress event a dog's cortisol can take up to seventy-two hours to return to baseline, and after a sustained upheaval like rehoming it can take considerably longer. A dog cannot learn well, eat well or settle well while that is still elevated. This is the physiological reason the first fortnight has to be quiet — not sentiment.

Both our breeds feel this keenly

Hungarian Vizslas and Hungarian Wirehaired Vizslas are among the most people-attached breeds there are. The trait that makes them wonderful — that they want to be with their person constantly, in the same room, ideally in physical contact — is the same trait that makes rehoming hard on them. A Vizsla that has lost its person has lost the organising fact of its life. Expect intense attachment-seeking once the dog does begin to bond with you, and be aware that Vizslas are prone to separation distress. They are also soft dogs. Harsh handling, raised voices and physical corrections do not produce a compliant Vizsla; they produce a frightened one that shuts down further and takes months longer to come good.

Italian Greyhounds are thin-skinned in both senses. They feel cold acutely, they startle easily, and a frightened Iggy will bolt — which matters enormously because their legs break easily and a panicked one can be through a gap you did not know existed. Their house-training is famously fragile and frequently regresses completely on rehoming, regardless of how reliable the dog was previously. Assume you are starting from nothing, and provide warmth, soft bedding and secure fencing from day one.

The timeline

These periods overlap and no dog reads the schedule. Treat them as what to expect, not a promise.

The first two weeks — decompression

Your only job in this period is to be boring and predictable. Not to bond, not to train, not to show the dog off, not to find out what it can do. To let the dog's nervous system come down.

What this looks like in practice:

• A quiet house. No visitors, no parties, no meeting the extended family.
• No outings. No dog parks, no cafés, no beach, no training classes, no long adventurous walks. Short quiet walks close to home, or in the beginning perhaps only the yard.
• A defined safe space the dog can retreat to and is never disturbed in — a crate with the door open, a bed in a quiet corner, a spare room. Children must be taught that when the dog is there, the dog does not exist.
• The same food it was eating with us, in the same amounts, at consistent times. Change food later and change it slowly.
• Minimal handling. Do not hug, do not loom over, do not pick up, do not repeatedly call the dog to you for cuddles. Let the dog choose when to approach.
• A house line — a light lead left on in the house while you are supervising — so you never need to grab a collar.
• Treat the dog as entirely un-house-trained. Out on waking, after eating, after play, and every couple of hours besides. Reward outside; say nothing about accidents inside beyond cleaning them up properly with an enzymatic cleaner.

What you can reasonably expect during this period: refusal of food, loose stools, restlessness, pacing, panting that is not heat-related, following you from room to room, or the opposite — retreating and staying retreated. Broken sleep. Little interest in toys or play. Possibly some vocalising at night. Possibly a dog that appears entirely fine, which as above is not the same as being fine.

What not to conclude in this period: anything at all about the dog's personality, trainability, energy level, sociability or suitability. You are not meeting the dog yet.

Weeks three to eight — the dog arrives

Somewhere in here the dog works out that this is not a temporary stop. It begins to relax, and as it does, the real animal appears.

This is the honest part: for many owners this period is harder than the first fortnight, because the quiet dog is replaced by a dog with an agenda.

Expect some or all of the following:

• Testing. Counter-surfing, getting on furniture, taking things, pushing at boundaries that seemed established. The dog is not being ungrateful; it is finding out how this house works.
• Emerging behaviours. Resource guarding around food, beds, toys or a person may appear now for the first time. So may reactivity on lead, barking at the window, or anxiety about being left. None of this was hidden from you deliberately — it simply was not accessible while the dog was shut down.
• Attachment, then separation distress. As the dog bonds to you, being separated from you becomes worth objecting to. This is why we ask you to begin very short, undramatic absences early — a minute, then five, then twenty — rather than waiting until the dog is deeply attached and then leaving it for a full working day.
• Regression. House-training that seemed solid falls apart. A dog that walked nicely pulls. Progress is not linear and a bad week does not undo a good month.
• The first real play. Often a turning point. The day a rehomed dog offers a play bow is usually the day it has decided it is safe.

This is the period to begin gentle structure: a predictable daily rhythm, simple reward-based training in very short sessions, and clear, consistent house rules applied kindly. Decide the rules before the dog arrives and keep every member of the household to them. Inconsistency is more stressful for a dog than strictness.

Introductions to the wider world can begin here, slowly, one new thing at a time, with the option to leave whenever the dog says it has had enough.

Two months and beyond — consolidation

By around eight weeks most dogs have a working understanding of the household, know who lives here, know roughly what the day looks like, and have begun to relax into it.

Now the work becomes ordinary dog work: building reliability, filling in gaps in training, addressing whatever specific issues have surfaced, gradually widening the dog's world. Progress is usually steadier and more predictable from this point, but it is still progress rather than arrival.

Continue to expect setbacks around change — a holiday, a house guest, a new routine, a move of furniture. A dog in this phase still has a thinner buffer than a settled dog.

Three to four months — settled

Plan for a rehomed adult to take three to four months to fully settle, and accept that some take longer. A dog that has had multiple homes, or a difficult history, or is naturally anxious, may take six months or more before you are seeing it at its true baseline.

Settled does not mean perfect. It means the dog's behaviour has become stable and predictable, that it recovers from ordinary upsets without falling apart, that it can be left within reason, that it sleeps properly, and that its personality is consistent from week to week. That is the point at which you actually know the dog you have.

If you are the sort of person who will find three months of uncertainty intolerable, an adult rehome is not the right choice for you, and we would much rather you told us that now than in week five.

Signs of distress

Learn these. Most dogs give quiet signals long before they give loud ones, and the loud ones are usually a consequence of the quiet ones having been missed.

Early and easily missed

• Lip licking when no food is present
• Yawning when not tired
• Turning the head or whole body away
• "Whale eye" — head still, eyes swivelled so the whites show
• Freezing or going stiff, particularly around food, toys or a bed
• A tucked or low, fast-wagging tail; a wag is not automatically friendliness
• Shaking off as though wet, when dry
• Excessive sniffing of the ground in a situation that does not warrant it
• Refusing food it would normally take
• Scratching or grooming suddenly and out of context

Clearer signs

• Panting that is not explained by heat or exercise
• Pacing, or an inability to lie down and stay down
• Hypervigilance — repeatedly checking doors, windows, sounds
• Trembling
• Hiding, or refusal to come out of the safe space
• Following you so closely you cannot move without treading on the dog
• Not sleeping, or sleeping in short broken bursts
• Loss of house training
• Destructiveness, particularly around exits and windows
• Vocalising when left
• Attempts to escape the house or yard

Serious — contact us

• Growling, snapping or air-snapping, particularly around food, beds or handling
• Any bite, however minor, and however provoked
• A dog that has completely stopped eating for more than about forty-eight hours
• A dog that cannot be approached at all
• Self-directed behaviour — flank sucking, obsessive licking, tail chasing that cannot be interrupted

On growling specifically: never punish a growl. A growl is information, freely given. A dog that is corrected for growling learns not to growl — it does not learn to stop being uncomfortable, and the next warning you get may be the bite. Note what caused it, remove the dog from the situation calmly, and tell us.

Setting the dog up to succeed

Before the dog arrives

• Decide the house rules and get every household member to agree to them.
• Prepare the safe space and put bedding in it.
• Check the fencing, gates and gaps, at the dog's eye level. Iggies in particular will find anything you have missed.
• Buy the same food we are feeding.
• Have a lead, a well-fitted collar with an ID tag, a house line, and for Iggies a properly fitted harness — sighthound necks and slip collars are a bad combination.
• Book a vet check for a week or two in, not day one, unless the dog is unwell.
• Clear your calendar. Take leave if you can. A dog that arrives on a Friday and is left alone on Monday has not been given a fair start.

The first forty-eight hours

Bring the dog home quietly. Take it straight to the toilet area before going inside. Show it the safe space, the water bowl and the yard. Then leave it alone and go about your evening. Do not gather the family round. Do not photograph it for two hours. Do not invite the neighbours to meet the new dog.

Sleep the dog where you intend it to sleep permanently, from the first night. Moving a dog's sleeping arrangements a week later is another upheaval it does not need.

Routine

Feed, walk, toilet and sleep at consistent times. Predictability is the single most calming thing you can offer. A dog that knows what happens next does not have to stay alert to find out.

Other dogs in the household

Introduce on neutral ground, both dogs on lead, walking in the same direction with distance between them, gradually closing that distance over the course of the walk. Do not let them meet nose-to-nose in a doorway, and do not put them together in the house and hope.

Feed separately, from day one and for good. Pick up all toys and chews initially and reintroduce them under supervision. Never leave a new dog and a resident dog alone together until you have had weeks of evidence that it is safe.

Children

Adult supervision at all times, without exception, for months. Teach the children: the dog is not to be followed, cornered, hugged, climbed on, woken, or approached while eating or on its bed. A dog that has learned that children mean pressure has no way to tell you except with its teeth.

The wider world

Add one new thing at a time and keep it brief. A five-minute exposure that ends while the dog is still comfortable is worth more than an hour that ends with the dog overwhelmed. Stress accumulates across a day — several small things a dog could each handle individually can add up to a dog that cannot handle the last one.

What not to do

• Do not flood the dog with affection, visitors, outings and stimulation in the belief that you are making up for its past.
• Do not test it — do not deliberately provoke a reaction to find out what it will do.
• Do not use harsh corrections, prong or shock collars, alpha rolls, or physical punishment. On a dog in this state they are both cruel and counterproductive.
• Do not let it off lead anywhere unfenced until the recall is proven, which will take months.
• Do not compare it to your last dog, out loud or in your head.
• Do not assume that because it is not a puppy it does not need teaching.

Talk to us

We would far rather hear from you in week two about something small than in month three about something that has become large. There is no question too minor, and asking is not a sign that you are failing.

We know these dogs. We know their parents, their littermates, and their history with us. That knowledge is available to you for the life of the dog and it costs nothing.

If it is not working, the dog comes back to us

This is not negotiable and it is not a formality.

If the placement is not working — for any reason, at any point, for the life of the dog — the dog is returned to Lasair. Not rehomed privately. Not advertised. Not given to a friend, a relative or a colleague. Not surrendered to a pound or a rescue. Returned to us.

We will take the dog back. We commit to that for the whole of the dog's life, and we do not make you justify the decision.

Please tell us early. A dog returned at week three, when the difficulty is that the household has realised it does not have the time, is a straightforward matter and that dog will re-place easily. The same dog returned at month nine, after the situation has been endured and resented and the dog has learned things in the meantime, is much harder to help.

There are costs associated with a return, and how any refund is calculated is set out in our Terms of Sale. But we would ask you to separate the two questions. Whether the placement is right for the dog is the first question. Money is the second one, and we will deal with it fairly.

Your agreement

Because an adult rehome asks more of an owner than a puppy does, we require this page to be explicitly agreed to before we will place an adult dog with you. In agreeing, you confirm that:

• You have read this page in full and had the opportunity to ask us about anything in it.
• You understand that the dog may take three to four months, and possibly longer, to settle fully, and you accept that period of uncertainty.
• You will give the dog a quiet, low-demand decompression period of at least two weeks on arrival.
• You will not use harsh or punishment-based training methods on this dog.
• You will supervise all contact between the dog and children, and between the dog and any resident animals, until we jointly agree that is no longer necessary.
• You will contact us early if you have concerns, rather than waiting.
• You will return the dog to Lasair, and to no one else, if the placement does not work out at any point in the dog's life.

This agreement sits alongside our Terms of Sale, which continue to apply in full.