We adopted our boy (saluki-greyhound) 3 weeks ago. The first week was chaos, too many zoomies, many things stolen or chewed on and so much anxiety left and right from every living soul in the household. He was over-stimulated outside, under-stimulated inside and made many many whiny noises.
Fast forward to this week and he’s really settled down. He’s now sleeping most of the day, finally eating all his chews that he spent the first week just barking at and instead of chaotic zoomies in the garden he’s playing tug of war and just taking in all the sounds. He’s also not have as many barking conversations with all our neighbourhood dogs when in the garden! We went to the garden several times for pee breaks today and most of the time he stood there awkwardly. Very greyhound. We’re also finally able to leave him alone (for just under 10 minutes), he was still anxious but settled after the first few minutes of whining.
We’ve conquered the vacuum, he ignores all apartment noises (and there are many), he LOVES strangers and has said hello to many sticky toddlers on bikes. His favourite human is on a trip and he’s handling it like a champ.
We’re still keeping the outside world small. When we do go out, he enjoys his sniffy walks and spends a lot of time trying to hunt cats and foxes. As expected, he isn’t comfortable with dogs at the moment. He’s now ok with barking dogs on the TV. Once he’s more confident we’ll start to work on his reactivity and socialise him with other hounds! Very proud of our boy…
Edit: any advice on when to introduce him to high streets, public transport, cafes etc would be great (at quiet times to minimise stress). We’re not really in a rush as we drive out of the city for calm walks. We live in central London. He managed to sleep just a few metres away from a builder’s concrete drill so we have high hopes for the future for him 😅