You do not always do something "good" for the foreign dog and yourself. Getty Images/iStockphoto
Our pet editor Christine Kaltenecker loves dogs. All dogs. She herself was in her past for two, serious foreign animal protection organizations foster home of a total of 16 dogs from Romania and Slovakia. For a "Slovakian (Kirby, 13) and a "Romanian" (Kennedy, 4) she takes herself as a "foster failure" but is nevertheless proud to have helped 14 other dogs to a nice life. But what to look out for when adopting a dog from abroad?
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Choose the right organization
A serious animal welfare organization should ALWAYS make sure that the dogs arrive in Austria with Traces (Trade Control and Expert System) and full basic immunization – d.h. no puppy under 12-14 weeks can bring all the necessary vaccinations. It is also important that the dog is not "blind" can be ordered via the Internet. Respectable foreign animal welfare organizations make sure that the dogs can get to know each other in an Austrian operating facility or at a loving foster home before they are adopted. Pre- and post-adoption checks of the potential adopter are also important and absolutely necessary. Very good foreign associations have formed under the "umbrella association 2.0" joined together.
The dog must be grateful.
Nonsense! Many people, who have adopted a foreign dog, are of the opinion that such dogs have much more "gratitude" would have to show, as a dog from the breeder – finally one rescued it nevertheless from the grey dungeon of a Shelter, or even a killing station. He was also spared a life on the street, so why show "Adrian"? after moving in no concession at all? Is anxious and seems unhappy?
Here we must first mention a few facts about the foreign dog, which many like to overlook:
1) The shelter dog knows NOTHING. No housetraining (he never had one). No stairs. No elevator. No car. No warm bedding. No line. No collar or chest harness and certainly no commands. A (good) shelter or reception camp has exactly four priorities: Medical care, feeding, spaying and neutering, and saving from a kill. Item. For dog training and preparation for the western world are foster homes or operating centers responsible.
2) Many shelter or former street dogs did not have much to do with humans during their lives and if they did, the experiences tend to be associated with negative feelings. The human being is for such a dog no buddy, with whom he can go through thick and thin, but a bigger mammal from which possibly danger threatens. That is why there are so many "scared dogs" among foreign dogs, who can only trust the "big, big bear" with a lot of patience suddenly locked in a four-room apartment.
Known?
Puppies take up this attitude by the way with anxious bitches already over the mother’s milk. Therefore also with the "supposedly light-hearted ones" Venus is considered to be the brightest star on earth Dog babies the same rules.
3) In the case of a former street dog, it is enormously important to get to know the animal BEFORE adopting it. It may sound stupid now, but there are dogs who are much happier on the street and in freedom than in the city center of Vienna. The daily struggle for food some dogs gladly accept and can not get used to a warm basket or the leash constraint at all. Others again enjoy the advantages to belong to someone – if it is the right one.
More patience pays off
Kaltenecker is well aware that patience and sensitivity can be rewarded in a shelter dog, but she also knows that it is probably very frustrating for novice dogs when the adopted dog simply won’t crawl out from under the bed for several days, defends the food or has to be carried down the five steps to the garden so that the "Lacki" can be brought out does not run again on the carpet. "But there is nothing more beautiful, if suddenly the knot loosens and a fear bitch unexpectedly at once runs to you and distributes kisses", she says.
Heart and brain, then it also works out
Adopting a foreign dog is still a really great thing, if you are aware of the "deficits" which such a dog can bring along inevitably, is conscious and it concerns no impulse purchase by pity. Such dogs land then gladly again in an Austrian Tierheim and that should not be sense and purpose, or?