Want it, want it now, have to have it!

As well as a passionate recruiter and talent identifier, I have equal passion and am an advocate for animal rescue.  My daily work companion is Astrid, a rescue Greyhound/Lurcher and since childhood studied the similarities between confused humans and animals... The same behaviours are often seen in both.

Greyhound Gap is a charity that rescues and rehomes Greyhounds and lurchers.  Many of the dogs go to them as a last ditch attempt to save their lives.  Physical injuries are dealt with swiftly by their exceptional vets, but emotional trauma takes far longer.  Once these two key issues are tackled, training for a successful and meaningful life start.  Lisa Cartwright who started the rescue and runs it with true dedication and expertise wrote this enlightening and powerful piece today.  She captures perfectly the needs of a rescue dog and one of the key reasons that adoptions fail.

Why am I sharing this on LinkedIn you ask?  Lisa identifies today's culture of “want it, want it now”.  I relate to this within my recruitment and talent work on a daily basis.  In our current times of fast paced industry and needing results are we all guilty at times of expecting the “perfect result” in the perfect timeframe.  Are we doing this at the expense of the forthcoming generations of professionals however?  Lisa talks about the patience needed for a rescue dog, an animal going into an unknown environment, unclear on expectations, believing it is doing what it should be doing, but often getting it wrong and how we can either build their confidence, or crush it and with it their chances of success. 

This is literally life and death stuff to these dogs.  A little over the top to bring this analogy to the work place?  No, not at all.  We all get into bad habits.  We all get caught up in the need for instant gratification and we all can fail as a result.    We are quick when recruiting to make judgement on potential new hires and how they may or may not demonstrate their ability to take accountability, but are we doing all we can to care, to develop, and to empower new employees?  I hope that you can see the similarities here and take something valuable away from Lisa’s article.

SO YOU *WANT A RESCUE DOG?* - Lisa Cartwright

Well today was going to be my day off because we have a busy weekend but I forgot I have stuff on I need to be on the yard for. However, there are enough people on the clean so I thought I would take time in the office to sort some fundraisers out. Whilst doing that I snuck a sneaky peek at my newsfeed which is something I don't get to do often. As you can imagine having been privileged enough to work with adopters and rescue dogs rehoming them for 15 years now my newsfeed is in the main only filled with one thing. Dogs/rescue/dog rescue groups etc. What I saw is what I see a lot of and something I have been thinking about for a long time. Times are a changing and not for the better. 15 years ago when I started rehoming there was a lot less dogs in rescue. It seems no matter how hard we work, how many welfare changes are made, how many new rescues are born there are still more and more dogs needing help. More people are adopting rescue dogs which is fabulous but the “see it, want it, get it” culture seems to be spreading and I am seeing more and more good organisations getting failed homings. Organisations that over the last 15 to 20 years never had that issue. All of our adopters years ago were what we called quality adoptions, we had quality adopters. People who had an understanding of what not only taking a dog on meant but taking a rescue dog on meant. People used to travel the length and breadth of the UK to secure a rescue dog from us..... usually a difficult rescue dog that had gone through hell and back. They understood these dogs had needs, required time and would make mistakes. They understood that they needed to commit fully, time, emotionally and physically and that a rescue dog can be hard work. Not all but some. It’s unrealistic to expect 90 per cent of dogs to walk into the home, settle and be perfect. You are after all in effect the bare bones of it taking an *animal* into your home.

Now this is long winded but please stick with it as if this post helps even only ONE adopter or one rescue dog to have a better relationship and understanding and really makes people think before taking on a dog then it’s worth it whilst I can sneak an hour to write it.
People say we should not humanise a dog in an analogy, but why not? Are our needs really much different to that of the animal we chose to spend our lives with? Shelter, comfort, security, trust, bonds, essential food, stimulation, exercise and love, it’s something we are all entitled to, some of us are lucky enough to get it, some of us not but it’s something we all deserve? As a human child if you were lucky ALL of your childhood would have been filled with positive reinforcement, positive experiences. Is this so different from puppies who have a good start? Or our much loved rescue dogs who necessary may not have? Your parents, family, teachers etc spend years positively conditioning you to see the best in yourself, to allow you to make your own choices, to teach you impulse control and to praise you when you made the right decisions, to give you the freedom to think for yourself and occasionally make mistakes. If the mistakes were non-life threatening and just a bad choice at that given time and you learnt by them in the main they would be ignored. You made that choice you learnt it was a bad one, they let it go. You were free to make those choices. 
Bringing a rescue dog into your home needs to be on that same basis. From the day you bring that dog home you need to set firm but gentle boundaries but accept that this *animal* often an animal from a bad start who has not had this input WILL make mistakes. Think of it in the same way as handling a child who has not been so lucky, you are in a position to help that child learn, to turn that child’s life around. It’s no different for a dog. The mistakes they make, the choices they make and how those mistakes are handled is down to YOU. Liken yourself to a company boss. YOU made the choice to employ someone else, much the same as you make a choice to adopt a rescue dog. Its free will. It does not mean when that new employee lands you won’t be filled with dread! You will be worried, your stomach will churn and you will think for the first couple of weeks whilst you form a bond with that new employee *what have I done?* You may panic, get depressed, feel low and at the same time you have to attempt to keep yourself in a positive enough frame of mind to engage that new employee and help them understand what is needed of them, what you expect. If you allow the negative to take over it will not work! It’s no different with a dog. They cannot walk into an environment and understand what is expected. Now put yourself in the place of the employee! You land at a new job, you know no one, its alien. You may well have had years of training to prepare you for this moment but nothing, nothing prepares you for the nerves you feel in a new environment, new people, so many changes and so much to learn. You may not have even had any training towards this moment. Now imagine during those first few weeks if everyone you worked with constantly stepped up to tell you NO! That’s wrong. No we don’t do it like that! NO STOP! Imagine how that would feel? How different would you feel if your new work mates instead said... Brilliant that is exactly what we need! Yes that’s right, fabulous! Thank you. Well done. If you change the toner cartridge wrong it’s not the end of the world! You learnt it was not done the right way by doing it yourself, being able to make your own choice to try and when it went wrong you learnt that you had not done it the right way but more so nobody seemed to mind! You either re assess and work out how to change that cartridge yourself or you look to those in charge to show you how to do it the right way. Most importantly though.... They did not chastise you, they did not tell you no and they did not make you feel bad or stupid for attempting it and doing it wrong. Your confidence would build, you would relax, you would learn to be independent and learn for yourself. You would be much happier in that environment as opposed to only being engaged when you did something wrong. With the constant positive re enforcement you are more likely to listen to any powerful negative.... For instance, you do something dangerous like attempt to lock a fire door and someone yells NO! STOP! You would listen. Without constant negative in a dangerous situation you STOP! Understand what I am saying? Choosing to take on a dog is your prerogative, however it’s a dogs prerogative to be invested in. The dog deserves no more, no less. They are not a new pretty ornament. Dogs and their care and needs take up a HUGE amount of time. They are an investment; you are investing into their future. With a dog you only get back what you put it! They are not psychic, they are not programmed robots, they don’t understand what they are expected to do and how they are expected to behave. If you are too tired, too busy, too lazy to invest in a dog then think twice about adopting one! Especially one that has probably already been badly let down! I see so many people get hung up on dogs staying in rescue environments, foster homes, kennels for so long! Hell I even see rescues say this poor dog has been with us 6 months! If a rescue is doing a good job and investing in the dogs in their care properly it should not matter if the dogs spends the rest of its life there. It should be getting the love, security and nurture it requires. Of course a home is best but a rescue should be better than a lot of what these dogs have experienced before.
Whether you are a first time adopter, a long time adopter, a multi dog adopter it does not matter. EVERYONE before taking on a first dog, a new dog, even there 30th dog needs to understand every dog is different. For the first 2 weeks especially you may feel like you are trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. In 90 per cent of cases YOU WILL GET THERE but that is down to YOU not the dog. It’s down to you no matter how tired you are digging deep, checking yourself a thousand times over and handling that dogs pivotal learning period within your home properly...... POSITIVELY! This is NOT about you! It’s not about how this new alien is making YOU FEEL! No matter how sick you feel, how stressed you feel, how tired you feel its I can guarantee 10 times worse for the currently dependant, confused alien that YOU CHOSE to drop into your home! Dogs crap, they pee, they chew, they howl, they bark, they nip, they get frustrated, they show aggression. Most not all BUT some may. You have to accept that this is not down to them it’s down to you and how you handle every given situation. It’s down to you to positively make changes for them! One last word of warning..... chose where you adopt from wisely! Chose an organisation who seem to know a lot about their dogs, chose an organisation who will give you the worst case scenario of that dogs horrific messed up behaviour when it landed into their care! Listen to the advice the rescue gives you and follow it. Ring, speak to them, speak to the dogs carers and remember they like you are there to help this dog settle and turn into a happy functioning dog. Do not say I tried it, I tried it, I tried it when you haven’t because you are a) to tired b) to stressed or c) and most importantly because you are in that two week what the hell have I done stage where it’s easier to cut, run and mess the dog up again because hey it doesn’t matter right? You made the choice to have it and now you can make the choice to dispose of it. Not all adoptions will work fact, some dogs just need more than a home can genuinely offer, not through laziness, not through not trying and not because it’s easier for the adopter to just let it go but because its generally the wrong environment. When that happens good rescues are not cross or upset! They are heartbroken. Heartbroken for the dog and adopter. 
I honestly to goodness hope this post helps one person, one dog and if it does then I can say it was worth writing! I feel it needed saying so before you adopt.... STOP, THINK.... Be honest with yourself because this possibly damaged little soul needs YOU to be in this 100 per cent if humanly possible for the long haul! To be willing to spend the time and if necessary the money to get help needed but to be most importantly committed.