Four Moments that Make or Break a Meet & Greet | Episode 17

My rescue dalmatian Rory turned 7 today. Truthfully she turns seven some time in February and that’s all the information we got from the rescue, so I just chose Valentine’s Day as a way to remember the date.

Of course, when milestones like these come up I often take a little walk down memory lane. I reminisced about the past 6 years, since her adoption - boy has it flown by! That led me to the day we first met at her meet and greet in Chatham, Ontario. So, I thought I’d take this opportunity to relive that day with you all and to point out some major moments that can make or break the adoption during this visit.

Clearly, in this case, the meet and greet ended in her favour but it sure didn’t start out that way. We drove 2 hours to Chatham in the fall of the year that my husband, T.J., and I got married. We had had our rescue dog Geller for two and a half years at this point and he joined us for the ride as well.

We were on our way to meet an 8 month old dalmatian, her foster parent and a volunteer for PAWR (Pet and Wildlife Rescue of Chatham). We pulled up to a house and went out back to meet everyone in the yard. We had yet to enter the gate and the dalmatian was barking quite incessantly. Not a great start. The foster parent told us to come closer and we knelt to the ground alongside her. The dog wanted nothing to do with us, avoided eye contact and our touch. It was pretty clear she saw us as strangers and felt no need to get to know us.

I was at a loss at this point. I had quite a bit of experience dealing with strange dogs as an RVT at a vet clinic and they usually warmed up to me. She didn’t seem like a bad dog but she wanted nothing to do with us so how could we really assess our chemistry or her personality if things were to stay this way? My husband and I definitely exchanged a few “I don’t know about this” glances. We weren’t sure we would be bringing our other dog into the backyard at this point.

My memory’s a bit fuzzy, but I believe the rescue volunteer suggested that another dog may make her feel more at ease so we brought Geller to the backyard. Again, a lot of barking occured while we came and went from the yard. Geller had a leash on as we entered the yard but after a few minutes we dropped the leash and let Geller and the dalmatian find their way to each other. It was a pretty calm introduction. Neither of them made too much of a fuss about the other and they seemed to be perfectly content coexisting.

Despite Geller’s presence and comfort with us,  the dalmatian still showed no signs of allowing us to handle her. I knew this was a non-negotiable for me. I needed to know more about what she was capable of. So we asked to take her for a short walk around the block, without our other dog vying for our attention. The foster passed her leash over to us without issue. As we walked we realized that Rory had no leash manners and a short attention span. This coupled with her alert barking behaviour was not showing much promise.

You see this time around I was outright looking for a challenge. Geller’s integration was for the most part smooth and I was ready to test my training skills and animal behaviour knowledge by getting a ‘project’. So I had a list of behaviours that would be more than I wanted to handle at the time and nuisance barking was one of them. I saw a lot of these dogs in clinic (german shepherds *cough *cough) and I vowed to never own one of them. This was really naive of me and I know now that there’s a lot of reasons why dogs bark and there is a multimodal approach to be taken. However, bad habits can be hard to break so I wasn’t wrong there.

At this point in the walk we assumed we wouldn’t be adopting Rory. She appeared to need work on most fronts, from what we had experienced, and that was likely more than we wanted to handle. As a last ditch effort, I sat down on the grass of someone’s front lawn and invited Rory over to me, at this point she gladly came over and sat, then laid down beside me. This was a shocking turn of events considering she wouldn’t let us near her at all in the backyard. When she laid down I did a physical exam of her from head to toe to tail to assess her health but also to assess her reaction to handling.

To our surprise, she let us touch her everywhere without hesitation. I really didn’t expect this. I could lift her lips up and check her teeth, touch her toes and toe nails, rub her belly - you name it. This moment changed the entire outcome of our meet and greet. Had I not done this I wouldn’t have seen her affectionate side, her tender personality or her ability to trust us. Seeing how she went from complete distrust in the backyard to content surrender with us on our walk I just knew she had an overwhelming amount of potential.

I might have been sold at that point but I had to do a little convincing to assure my husband that we could handle the very apparent training and behaviour issues this dalmatian had already displayed. In the end, his worry was no match for my confidence and we brought her home with us that day.

So, here’s the four major moments that were crucial in Rory’s case but could make or break any meet and greet:

The first impression

Meeting your current dog

Going on a walk

The handling demonstration

It’s so crucial to take your time with a meet and greet in order to get as much on the table as possible. The more you know about the dog before adoption the better prepared you can be in making the choice to take on certain challenges. Having the chance to adjust your expectations at this time can also greatly reduce frustrations following adoption and help you get off to a better start.

This is why the Pawdoption Guide Membership experience (launching February 27th!!), which empowers dog adopters to excel at each step of the adoption process, has a detailed Meet & Greet Checklist that takes you through these major moments. You’ll know how to greet the dog, how to assess their trainability, how to observe basic health indicators and the specifics to request while the dog’s foster parent or rescue volunteer is demonstrating handling with them. If you’re struggling to adopt the dog of your dreams, join the membership waitlist today.

Just as it was with Rory, having bad behaviours crop up during a meet and greet doesn’t have to bring the process to a screeching halt. Instead, it gives you a better idea as to what your focus will be following adoption and whether you are equipped to be the dog owner facilitating that.

Rory was anything but straightforward in the integration process. I tried so many approaches before finding what worked for her barking behaviour, her leash skills and her stranger danger. However, as we dealt with these obstacles, it made a huge difference just knowing that we had made the choice to improve them.

As Benjamin Franklin once said “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” My goal with this podcast and the membership experience is to make sure you are always equipped to deal with the rescue dog adoption process and preparation is key to choosing a dog that is compatible with you, creating a bond that makes every ounce of work worth the effort.