The first week home: what ‘settling in’ actually looks like

Every adopter gets the same speech at the door, and every adopter forgets it by Tuesday. So here it is in writing: the first week is not a preview of your life together. It is a stranger in a strange house, working out whether the rules here are different.

The three-day hide

For roughly three days, most dogs do very little. They pick one corner — behind a chair, under a desk, occasionally the bathtub — and they stay there. They may not eat much. They may not want the walk you had planned. This is normal and it is not a verdict on you.

Let them have the corner. Put the food down and walk away. Sit on the floor at a distance with a book and say nothing. Boredom is the fastest route to curiosity.

The dog who ignores you on day two is often the dog who follows you to the bathroom on day twelve.

The two-week test

Somewhere in week two, the hiding stops and the testing starts. Counters get surfed. A shoe goes missing. The dog who would not make eye contact now barks at the neighbour’s cat with real conviction.

This is good news wearing a bad disguise. Confidence is what makes training possible. Set the boundaries you actually want to live with now, gently and every single time.

The unglamorous kit

• A martingale collar, fitted properly, so a startled dog cannot back out of it.
• A baby gate, which solves more problems than any training video.
• An enzyme cleaner, purchased before you need it at midnight.
• The food they were already eating, changed over slowly if you change it at all.

The three-month exhale

Trainers talk about three days, three weeks, three months. The last one is when the dog stops auditioning. They sleep on their side. They bring you a toy unprompted. They develop opinions about which chair is theirs.

If you are six weeks in and still wondering whether you made a mistake, you are on schedule. Call us anyway — that is what the group chat is for.

What actually helps

Routine, in the boring sense: same walk times, same feeding spot, same bedtime. Fewer visitors in week one than you want. A crate left open with a blanket over it. And one person designated as the calm one, because dogs read the room faster than we do.

Then, eventually, a Tuesday evening arrives when nothing remarkable happens and the dog is simply asleep on the floor beside you. That is the whole thing. That is what all of it is for.