Transitioning into a House Dog

When bringing Luci home, we had no idea what to expect when transitioning her from being a street dog into a house dog. Would she have to be potty trained like a puppy? Would she chew up our shoes or destroy our couches? Scratch the floors? There were many unknowns.

Much to our pleasant surprise, Luci didn’t have any accidents in the house. Well… she had ONE accident the very first night, but I believe it was due to nerves and her tummy was likely upset from being anxious after her 11-hour flight to Canada. To this day however, we haven’t had a single other accident in the house. She’s never chewed any piece of furniture, any shoes, and has never destroyed any of our belongings. We bought her a toy early on and it took her about a week before she realized it was hers and she could play with it as she wished.

We decided it would probably be best we get her fixed sooner rather than later, so we scheduled an appointment and booked her in. We dropped her off at her scheduled appointment time and waited for the call when she was ready to be picked up. You could imagine our surprise when they called saying that apparently, she had already been spayed! They also informed us that her one hip wouldn’t fully extend out while they were prepping to do the surgery, which means she had been in some sort of accident in the past.

The thing about street dogs is you have no idea what they have gone through. Were they born a street dog? Did they have another life and another family before us? Was Luci abandoned by her old family? Abused? One of the hardest parts is knowing we’ll never have answers, but all we can do is move forward together. We asked my friend and her mom their thoughts, and they mentioned that she could have belonged to another family, but it was also possible that Chile has programs in place where they take street dogs and spay them so they can’t reproduce. In our case, we’re leaning towards the first since she seemed to have been house trained already. For the most part…

Since my mom speaks Spanish, I had her try all the basic commands to Luci in Spanish. We tried sit, down, come, etc. and she didn’t seem to know any of them, so we think she might’ve been living on the streets for a while (or my mom’s Spanish isn’t as good as she thinks). I’ve made progress teaching her basic commands in English, but she’s a people pleaser and seems to automatically sit when she comes over and doesn’t seem to really ‘know’ the command. She seems to do better with hand gestures, so that’s what we tend to do with her.

We’ve never had experience with rescue animals before, so it’s been a real learning curve. Luci tends to favour my mom since she takes her on 5km walks in the forest each morning, so my mom’s the master while I seem to be more like a ‘fun aunt’, which is ok with me. She gets fed daily and has a roof over her head and she is loved. She seems to dislike men more than women, which leads us to believe she may have been abused by a man pre-us. Once she warms up to you though, which can take some time, she really loves you. But we’re still learning and we’re not perfect.

We’ve had incidents where she has nipped people, but no serious bites (thank goodness). We’ve realized that back in Chile she rarely interacted with the other dogs and tended to keep to herself. She’s very submissive and timid. We’ve learned that her aggression is likely due to her being stressed in certain situations or being territorial over my mom and me. We do our best to avoid this at all costs. She’s fine outdoors, and when around unfamiliar people, we ask them to keep their distance. She wouldn’t go out of her way to nip or bite anyone, it usually only occurred when they approached her before she felt totally comfortable early on.

Luci has made incredible progress, but since she is still somewhat unpredictable, we put her upstairs behind a gate when we have company over. This isn’t the ideal situation, but that’s what I signed up for when I decided to bring home a 2-3-year-old dog where I had no knowledge of her past history. She’s still incredibly loving, cuddly, and kind with my family and everyone who she’s familiar with, and she still brightens up my day every time I walk through that door and she comes to greet me. However, if you ever do decide to rescue an animal, please please do your research and know strays are often more work than animals you can get and train when they’re young. There’s no guarantee that it will be a quick and easy transition. I can say that if you are willing to put in the time and effort, they are so worth it.