Discussing Dog Behavioural Issues With Rocky Road Rescue — Part Three
“We really need some fosters, and we only have three cat fosters.”
Yep, we’re talking about Romanian rescue dogs (and cats) again! This is part three of my interview with Rocky Road Rescue, and we’ll be diving into all sorts today! If you’ve not read the previous two parts, I’d recommend checking those out first for extra context and important info:
Adopting a Romanian dog (also called a Rommie) isn’t without its issues. They’ll often have dealt with mistreatment, hunger, and things we don’t want to imagine. This can cause behavioural problems and anxious dogs.
My two girls, Cassi and Delphi, have different issues. These problems aren’t insurmountable by any means, and they give you an insight into their former lives. It’s crucial to get to know your dog, their body language, and their triggers. That way, you can always look out for them.
It helps when they have big, readable ears, like Cass.
Cassi is an anxious girl. She doesn’t like people if they’re acting weirdly (same), specific-looking people, and she’s jumpy. This makes sense considering Rocky Road believes a dog snatcher caught her, and she was in a kill shelter so bad that the Romanian ASPA seized her.
Cass reminds me a lot of myself. That’s not a good thing, as my brain is shit, but it’s easier for me to work out what might bother her as we both have a history of trauma. On the positive side, she’s lovely and super smart. She has so much love to give, and her anxiety has lessened now that she knows she’s safe. She also loves her sister, Delph ❤
Delphi is the most loving, happy dog I’ve ever met. She’ll give you cuddles and make sure you know you’re loved. She was full-on lying all over me, cuddling me on the second day of being with us! Personal space doesn’t register with ol’ Delph.
But she also has her issues! Delphi is a resource guarder and escape artist. She’s also scared of dogs. The escape artistry has thankfully finally stopped (touch wood). She came from Barlad shelter, which is renowned for being overcrowded, so she likely had to fight for food. That explains her dog fear and resource guarding.
Resource guarding is common.
Any dog can have it, shelter pup or not. That also means there’s plenty of advice (good and bad) about how to deal with it, and behaviourists know how to improve the situation. We didn’t have to go that far with Delphi, thankfully: slow and patient reconditioning has really helped 🥰
She went from growling when Cassi was even in the same room while she was eating to letting me stroke her while she’s having a new, exciting snack. She’ll often sit and eat an older treat right next to Cassi with no problem at all. They’ll swap treats back and forth with no arguments as well. Amazing and pretty mind-blowing progress! (Heavy emphasis on ‘new’ and ‘old’ treats, though: old treats are low value, and new ones still need work!)
Gaining their trust is hugely important here. They have to know you (and your other dog, if you have one!) aren’t going to take away their food. I often offer an extra little nibble (or five) in my hand when she’s eating a new treat to show her that I bring tasty things; I don’t take them away! (Swapsies is another thing entirely; trading is something I tend to reserve for random stuff she picks up that she shouldn’t!)
I also gave her lots of nibbles when Cassi was in the same room while she was eating, which seemed to help. It’s essentially reconditioning them to realise that you and your dog aren’t a threat but actually bring more food.
Oh, and don’t take their behaviour personally! Delphi still gently growls at me if my hand gets too close to a new treat.
Never punish a growl.
She knows I’ll back off if she growls, and the fact I respect that means she won’t bite me. If you start yelling at them or pinning them down for growling, they’ll bypass the warning. The next thing you know, you’re complaining about your highly distressed dog biting you without warning.
Alpha dog/dominance theory and the associated negative training is widely disproven, and it’s dangerous. Treat your dog with love and care, and your bond will flourish. Positive training is the way forward! It can be hard to gain the trust of a Rommie, so you don’t want to damage that with the wrong training.
I asked Kathryn, co-founder of Rocky Road Rescue, about her experience with behavioural problems:
What behavioural issues do you see with Rommies?
Kathryn: Well, these aren’t exclusive to Romanian dogs; these are just dog issues. Here are some we see:
- Resource guarding/food aggression
- Escape artistry
- People guarding
- Other dog aggression
- Reactivity on lead
- Barking
- Destroying things
- Separation anxiety
My advice is to either get a behaviourist or a good book. We always recommend Victoria Stilwell books. If you read them, you’ll see these issues are actually very common.
Me: Ah, well, I’ve got most of these issues! Well, not me, the dogs. Although I heavily relate to the food aggression.
Kathryn: There are quite easy, simple ways of dealing with it, but you’ve got to stick at it.
People don’t give it long enough; they want a perfect dog instantly.
We get people who want a house-trained or lead-trained dog. We can’t say for sure that they’re house-trained— they’re living in a kennel. Some people in the UK just want the perfect dog, but they’re not prepared to put the work in. Fortunately, it’s only a small percentage, but it does happen.
Me: Caroline told me she’s had people sending dogs back because they’re not exactly as they want them to be.
Caroline: They want the dog to arrive and immediately interact with the whole family. It just doesn’t work.
Kathryn: They just think they can introduce their existing dogs, and they’re going to fall in love instantly and be best buddies. It doesn’t work like that; it takes time. Yes, it might take an hour, it might take a day, but it usually takes time, and some people want it instantly.
The same for introducing to cats, “It’s chased my cat!” Well, give it time and tell it off. We can’t deliver perfection.
Me: No, but you can’t get that in the UK either. You can pick up any dog, you could even get a puppy, and they may still have issues.
Caroline: Yeah, I’ve seen it a lot with the puppies; they adopt the puppy when they’re, say, four months old. If they don’t have walks as they enter their teenage period, they get bored and frustrated. And then the adopter is like, “Oh, my dog is naughty!” But it’s actually not — it’s just bored.
Kathryn: I’ve got a pug that I’ve had since she was eight weeks old. She has food aggression. Either you live with it, manage it, or train it out.
What are your favourite things about Rommies?
Kathryn: I find my dogs very loving. They’re very easy, but I think having a pack makes things easier anyway because they just copy each other. They’re very resilient. Overall, they’re just easy.
Me: Yeah, I realised these two can lie around all day; they just don’t care. Apparently, it’s what they do when they’re on the streets, and I love that.
I also love how smart they are. I know they’re not all like that, but these two are very clever. Cassi picks up tricks so quickly. You can show her something maybe four times, and she’ll get it; she’s a very clever girl.
I think they’re also quite empathetic, and they’ll know if you’re sad. Cassi can read my eyebrows. I’ll eyebrow at her across the room, and she knows what I’m saying to her. It’s a great way of telling her to behave when she’s being cheeky!
Why do some dogs get adopted much faster than others?
Alex: It’s really hard to call sometimes. An example is Liam, who’s just a plain black mongrel. He’s very sweet, but he was just not anything special, and he went really fast. Sometimes the brown ones get overlooked.
You never know what people are going to fall in love with. Which is another reason why I like doing what I do. You always expect people to just want the cute and fluffy, but people do surprise me.
Me: Yeah, one thing that surprised me was that Delphi hadn’t had any applications. She looks like a frickin Labrador!
Alex: A Labrador with big doe eyes! When I rescued her from Barlad, I was like, “Yeah, she’ll go in a week.” Then we rescue a great big boring black one that’s all grey and gnarly, and someone adopts that in a week.
Me: I quite like how it’s unpredictable. With Delphi, it was very helpful for me when you guys posted saying she’d had no applications. I fell in love with her pretty much within the hour of when you uploaded that original photo.
I’d really been thinking about her since then, and a few weeks later, there was a post saying she’d had no applications. That was it for me. I think that’s the way to get people to do it; that’s the point where they’re probably gonna go “Okay, cool, I can do it now.” I’d tried to talk myself out of it earlier that month, even though we were ready for another.
“Some things are just meant to be. They’re meant to go to the people that they’re meant to go to. Hanging on to them for a little longer doesn’t ever really worry us. They’re waiting for the right person.”
Do dogs and cats go much faster once they’re in UK foster?
Alex: Yes, 100% Because they’re in the UK, people can come and see them. Still, sometimes it doesn’t help. Roxanne was in foster for a long time, wasn’t she?
Caroline: Three months, I think.
Alex: Which isn’t actually that long, but it seems long to us. Usually, the dogs that come over into foster are only here for a few weeks before they’re homed. We try to bring in the ones we know are really good, all-round dogs. Often, they’re only overlooked because they’re medium-sized, not an exciting colour, or the photos we’ve got aren’t the best.
When people can actually go and meet them, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, this is a great dog!” So, yeah, they do go quicker when they’re here.
Do you have many UK fosters?
Caroline: We don’t have many left because they adopted.
Alex: It’s very bittersweet because you get a great foster, and then they fall in love with one of the foster dogs. You’re so happy for the dog but sad the foster is leaving. I always worry. We’ve got a really great couple in Milton Keynes that foster for us. Every time I send them a dog, I’m like, “Please don’t fall in love with this dog!”
Me: I think some fosters can detach themselves and think, “This dog is not going to be staying.”
Alex: This couple has already adopted two, and they’re still fostering for us. They’re so brilliant and reliable. But I’ve got a feeling they’re going to have a third one day. A dog will step across their doorway, and they’re just going to go, “Yep, that’s the one!”
Caroline: They were almost about to keep Tiana from Greece, the scruffy black one.
Alex: I know. When we thought we were sending Barney there, I said to Mum, “I reckon they’ll keep him”, but the lady hurt her legs, so they’re not fostering for the moment.
Caroline: We have eight fosters now. Some of them are new, so we’ll see how they are.
Alex: They’re not all fostering at the same time; we have some resting. Some of them foster one after the other. Some of them only foster once a year. It depends on the people.
We really need some fosters, and we only have three cat fosters.
Most good fosters foster for other rescues. I think we just got in there late. I don’t know what they do to get them.
Kathryn: I think they’re all struggling to get fosters.
Alex: I think it’s just our reach. We have nearly 10,000 people on our page, whereas Pawprints2Freedom has over 70,000 people. We’re fussy and won’t have just anybody. We won’t have people that haven’t had dogs before or anyone that’s just after a free dog.
Caroline: Which is a lot of people.
Alex: If we’re suspicious that someone might just cut us off and keep the dog or see them as a toy for their children, nope. We’re not horrible, just picky. In some cases, we’ve given the dog to the foster. We’ve done that in quite a few cases. So if a foster has taken on an old dog, if they want to keep it, we’ll let them keep it. And we won’t charge them.
Caroline: Even Smila, who was a young and healthy dog.
Alex: Yes. Smila we gave to the foster because she’d been with her for a while, and she loved her but couldn’t afford to give the adoption fee. So we just let her have her. It’s more important to us that the dog is happy than getting an adoption fee. We know our fosters well enough to know how hard it will be for them to let them go. We wouldn’t do that to them.
Smila is another case where it’s a really lovely dog that didn’t get much attention. I think that’s because she looks massive in a picture. She’s the same size as Cassi.
Caroline: Yeah, she’s really small.
Alex: She looks like a donkey in those pictures. It’s an optical illusion.
Me: Yeah, she looks huge! I thought she looked very similar to Delphi, like they could almost be related. When I saw the first photos of Delphi, I thought she was gonna be smaller than Cassi. So when she turned up with these bloody long legs, I was surprised. And now? They kick me every fricking night. I shouldn’t have underestimated them.
Alex: She definitely grew. She was very petite in Barlad, but they get good food and exercise, and suddenly they’re growing.
Me: It makes a lot of sense when you consider how underfed they are in shelters. And I was so happy to hear about Smila. Obviously, you’d thought a lot about letting her foster keep her. You said you have a gut instinct about people and know when you don’t want to get involved with them.
How much do you rely on that “I don’t like this person” feeling?
Alex: If we get a bad gut feeling about a Romanian, that’s it; all of us trust ourselves. We don’t go there. Between the Directorate, we can figure out if someone is after money or wants to scam us.
Caroline: We ask each other for advice and opinions.
Alex: We support each other with a decision; if that’s the decision that you’ve made, no one’s going to challenge you. Still, it’s taken us time to learn, so we’ve been scammed quite a bit. We’ve had people do us over quite a bit, which is a horrible learning curve.
It’s made us better at what we do, and we can pick up if someone is corrupt. It can be really hurtful. Sometimes you trust the Romanians, or trust the person and think they’re a friend. But actually, they never were.
With potential adopters/fosters, we all voice our concerns, and usually, we follow that up with a phone call. Sometimes people can come across off in messages; I think I come across as quite blunt sometimes. But we always phone them to speak to them.
Having a conversation with the person always helps.
Caroline: Most of them are lovely adopters when you actually speak on the phone rather than messaging them.
Alex: If someone seems angry over a message and complains about something, Caroline always tries to phone them. They usually calm down, don’t they?
Caroline: Yeah, straightaway. You just stay calm and ask a few questions to make them rethink. Then they explain the issue, and it’s usually not as bad as it sounds.
Alex: Or they panic in the moment, and then they can’t calm down. If someone is still feeling uneasy after the phone call, then we usually don’t go through with the adoption or the fostering.
Me: It’s good to listen to that feeling because if you ignored it and something happened, you’d feel terrible.
Alex: We do our best. It’s all about communication between the team. We all have different opinions, feelings, and points of contention. I might get annoyed with something that someone else might let breeze past them.
We’re kind of like a machine. If something’s ticked me off, I’ll go to the rest of the team as a sounding board and say, “Am I just in a bad mood, or is this a problem?” And someone will say, “Oh, no, I have dealt with that person before they’re actually quite decent. I think you’ve just misread the conversation” or “I agree, that’s not right.”
It’s never one of us making a decision because you could have a bad day or misread the communication.
Me: That’s great. It must be really helpful to be able to talk to each other about things. Obviously, we talked about the emotional side, but to be able to make decisions together is vital. That’s got to be the best way to find the right people for your dogs.
Alex: We’ve got to the point where we get along so well that we can talk to each other about our concerns, and there’s no pushback or arguing. Everyone has open discussions, and we just go, “Okay, yeah, that’s fine.” That’s very different from the Directorate teams I’ve been in previously — ours is nice and relaxed.
Me: You don’t want to be fighting against each other when you’ve got other shit to be fighting. I completely get that. It sounds like you have a great team.
In the next part, we’re talking about misconceptions about Rommies, the charity’s work behind the scenes, and pet peeves.
Once again, thank you for reading!
If you want to support Rocky Road Rescue, check out these links:
Rocky Road really struggle with finding cat fosters, and they also struggle with fundraising for their kitties, too! They currently have a fundraiser, which you can check out here:
If you’re interested in fostering dogs or cats for Rocky Road, please get in touch with the charity on their Facebook page or website.
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