When it comes to dogs, it’s easy to fall in love with a face. We’ve all been there—scrolling our favorite rescue sites casually and—oops—encountering the dog of our dreams. But choosing to rescue is a life-changing decision, and just the start of a challenging and immensely rewarding journey. How do you know that picture-perfect pup is going to be the right fit for you and your lifestyle?
Though for some would-be adopters the adoption process can seem daunting, doing the work up front to find a good fit goes a long way to ensure you’re adopting a dog that matches your home and lifestyle, so you can live together happily. Below is a list of questions to ask and things to consider before you dive in, assembled with the help of adoption counselors, behavior experts, and fosters from across the country.
Lean on rescue resources, from adoption counselors to fosters
Many rescues have adoption coordinators who make it their business to assess dogs as well as prospective adopters, and play matchmaker. The advantage of working with an adoption coordinator is that you have a vetting resource at your disposal. They should know as much as there is to know about the dog, especially if that dog has spent time in a home context. They can help educate you on what kind of training will be appropriate and how to best set up your home for your household’s newest member.
If you’re adopting directly from a shelter, ask your adoption counselor if the dog you have your eye on has spent time in a home. In shelters, dogs can be overactive, reactive, anxious, shy, or exhibit any number of traits that don’t align with their typical temperament. On the other hand, their quirks, and what, if anything, makes them reactive, are more authentically present in a home context. A foster’s assessment of a dog is one of your best tools for understanding what they require on a day-to-day basis and whether they’ll fit into your household.
“One of the things we joke about is that when you adopt a dog out of a shelter, it’s like getting married on a blind date,” says Kirsten Wojcik, who has worked in shelter intake in the past and now trains dogs deemed aggressive or reactive in Marin County, California. “What I wish is for more people to foster. I wish fostering were more accessible. That would really give them the true insight into the personality of the dog, which we’re not seeing in the shelter.”
At Paws New England, which has been in operation and serving the northeast for almost 20 years, the volunteers set aside time for all of their dogs to live with a foster (they also incorporate a time for potential adopters to meet those fosters directly, in person or over video conference). At minimum, the dogs spend a week or two in foster, but often much longer. The organization’s fosters are able to observe the dog’s demeanor around children, other dogs, and cats to determine what kind of household they’re best suited for. They can observe how much exercise they seem to require and what, if anything, triggers reactivity, and then communicate that with the adoption counselor. Often, their long-term fosters are able to begin to trainee or continue training the dogs and give them structure.
One of those fosters, Alex Baudean, is a veterinary technician based in Tennessee who takes her fostered dogs to work with her every day. Her husband is also a dog trainer, so they are perhaps set up better than most to work with their fosters.
“All of our dogs, they sleep in the crate when they come in,” Baudean says. “We teach them a routine, house training, and see what their [triggers] are. If I’m saying this dog is perfect with children, we need to know if the toys or the food are a trigger. Obviously, no child should be walking up to a dog when it’s eating, but dogs are dogs, kids are kids, and that’s a huge thing for us to know if that dog is reactive to the bowl, the toy, or playing with other dogs.”
Beudean also provides the routine she’s started the dog on to the adopters to help ease the transition, which is incredibly valuable to a new dog owner.
Fosters are just one way to assess dogs in a home context. The Connecticut-based animal sanctuary Our Companions takes dogs with special needs from municipal shelters to live in their cottages. Their goal is rehabilitation—whether medical, behavioral, or both—before they place the animals in homes. They also have a rehoming program, where they facilitate the rehoming process, which involves getting to know the dog and marketing them to potential adopters, while dogs remain in their current homes.
In both cases, Our Companions staff get a sense of who the dogs are in situ. For the rehoming program, the dogs are already living in a house and will bypass the shelter on their way to a new home. The dogs in the sanctuary program live in the cottages on campus and are cared for by the staff, so their personalities in a home context are well understood. They can even get granular in how they interact with a common living room set-up.
“We have couches—maybe they don’t like sharing a couch, that certainly happens. We have a TV—so we can see if a dog is TV reactive,” Heather Wildman, the Adoption Program & Media Manager at Our Companions, says. Having this kind of understanding of the dog in a home context will give you a good sense of the dog and their routines, so you can find the one that fits your lifestyle and help ease the transition for the dog.
What’s your lifestyle? Be honest.
Perhaps the best thing you can do to match with a rescue is to be unsparingly honest about your lifestyle with the adoption counselor, and also with yourself. Wildman at Our Companions lays out a long list of some of the questions they ask potential adopters about their life: “Are they retired? Do they work from home? Do they have hybrid schedules? Do they work full time? Do they work second shift? Overnight? Type of home? Apartments? Multi-family homes? Single family home? Do they have a yard? Do they have a fenced yard? Where would they be exercising their pet? Training needs as well. Some dogs need continued training. Not only does that help with the bond but also any reactivity and resource guarding. Understanding your pet and being able to communicate with your pet is so important.”
Activity level, both your own and the dog’s, is an important aspect to consider. All dogs need exercise and enrichment, but the level can vary from pup to pup.
“Sometimes we have dogs who need a really busy lifestyle, and then sometimes we have dogs who need a quiet home,” Razza of Paws New England says. “Say, it’s an older dog. I have a dog like this right now. It’s an older dog and his family member, his dog mom, went into a nursing home, the family couldn’t keep him, so we’re looking for a home for him. He’s never lived with children, he’s only lived with an older person. We’re not going to put him into a home with five children who want a dog that’s going to play ball with them.”
Crucially, avoid looking for a dog to match a future version of yourself, like one where you wake up at 5 a.m. to go for a 5k run every day of the week all of a sudden. Be realistic about your current habits.
“I don’t think dogs should change your lifestyle,” Sarah Sidelinger, a longtime volunteer at Labrador Friends of the South. “There are a lot of people who are like, ‘I’m going to get this super energetic dog and we’re going to go on hikes everyday,’ but if that’s not your lifestyle now, it’s going to be hard to change your whole life around one dog.”
A good adoption coordinator will help suss these things out with you, which is why it’s helpful for everyone, including yourself, to be honest with them.
“I will ask questions, like what are you looking for in a dog to find out what they want and would like and how the dog might be a match for their lifestyle,” Razza says. “Another question I ask is what drew you to [this dog] to see if they have expectations of the dog that might not be realistic.”
Breed isn’t everything, but there is value in understanding breed traits
Perhaps one of the most valuable guidelines for finding the right dog is to look beyond looks. The biggest red flag for adoption counselors, according to both Razza and Wildman, is encountering a Yes Man—that is, a person who will say “yes” to everything an adoption counselor asks in hopes of getting the dog they saw in the photo.
“Sometimes in the interview, you’ll have someone that just kind of ‘yeses’ you about everything, and you feel like they’re not really hearing you,” Razza says. “A lot of times people see the face of the dog and fall in love.”
“Sometimes they’re too laser focused on one particular pet that they’re saying yes to everything,” Wildman echoes.
This is where being honest with yourself about your own needs comes into play. In the end, you might not get the dog that initially caught your attention, or the breed you thought that you wanted, but you may get the right dog for you.
Breed looks aren’t everything, but breed can play a role in understanding the right dog for your lifestyle. Every dog is different and a dog’s personality can vary based on environmental factors, past experiences, and a range of genetic predispositions within a breed. They are living, breathing beings and there’s no definitive scientific answer to what sort of behavioral traits are inherited. But breed can often point to your dog’s likely sense of purpose. Some dogs were bred to herd (herding dogs), others were meant to pull sleds (working dogs). Some dogs were bred to hunt rodents (terriers), others to sit companionably on a lap (toy dogs), and so on. So breeds, and their mixes, may help you identify what likely motivates them. When the match is a good one, the act of helping them fulfill their purpose will suit your lifestyle.
“Many times, [a dog’s sense of purpose] was connected to that job it was intended to do,” Wojcik says. “If they don’t have a sense of purpose and they’re sitting at the window all day, they’re going to give themselves a different job.”
A job like Head of Furniture Chewing, for example, or C.E.O. of Bark-Driven Protection Services. A recent study showed that one of the top reasons dogs are returned to shelters or abandoned are that owners perceive behavioral issues. Another study found that adopters who return animals for behavioral reasons are unlikely to rescue again.
Wojcik suggests finding a dog whose preferred job aligns with what you can provide for them and want to provide for them. It wouldn’t be wise, for example, to adopt a husky if you have no interest in outdoor activities.
“What people need to do is think about the form and function of a dog that’s going to meet their physical, mental, emotional needs,” Wojcik says. “If they are really highly social people and they want to be in places with dogs and places with people, then they need to look for a hyper social breed dog like one of the gun dogs: a lab, a retriever, a pointer. All of those dogs were selected to be in big groups of dogs and people.”
Breed may be able to tell you their basic sense of purpose, which translates into what they like to do, but since every dog is unique, nothing is going to be as valuable as a longterm in-person assessment. That’s why you should ask if the dog you’re interested in has spent time in a foster home, or the equivalent.
And keep in mind that a mixed breed dog can often provide the best of all worlds—unique, adorable looks with intense breed traits potentially dialed down.
Keep an Open Mind
No matter the personality of the dog, the best traits a person can have when adopting are openness and curiosity. Realistic expectations for a dog, plus a willingness to meet the dog where they are and put in work with them, are crucial in almost every adoption story.
Wojcik, who meets dog owners in the San Francisco Bay Area after they’ve adopted dogs from shelters, finds that this open approach is a big predictor of success. “Right now, I have 30-somethings in the tech industry and it’s their first dog. Many of them got big adolescent dogs because that’s what was in the shelter,” she says. “I find that range of clients very open because it’s their first dog. They’re not saying to me, ‘Look I’ve had three other Goldens. Why is this one not acting like the others.’”
No matter how much a dog “needs” training, setting aside time to work with them will improve your relationship, your bond, and your ability to communicate with your new family member, Wildman adds.
“I’ve found that whether you’re an experienced owner or a first-time pet owner, if you’re open to learning, that’s the best,” Wildman says. “We can never predict for sure what a dog is going to do in a new home, but if you’re keeping those lines open and transparent, then we can provide those resources and tools to help work through any potential issues for a successful adoption.”
