The day Coco came to me was not planned. I had deliberately stayed up that night to fix my sleep rhythm, so I had been awake for about thirty hours when she arrived. A strange start, looking back, and it did not become an easy week either. Not just because of my lack of sleep, but mostly because of what was going on with her.
What came through the door
Coco could not lie still. She was permanently busy, chewed at everything and settled nowhere. If I so much as put a glass down, she was sharp again and shot into panic. Outside it was worse. Out there everything came down to pulling on the lead and running circles.
That is the point where most people start with exercises. Sit, walk nicely, wait. But a dog who cannot rest cannot take anything in either. So that is not where I started.
What I was working towards
Two things: that she could rest, and that she noticed it was safe here. Nothing more. No commands, no building up, no homework.
When that would happen did not matter. I have never had a goal per week. A next step only comes when Coco is clearly ready for it, not because a schedule says it is time. As long as it keeps getting a little better, you are doing fine.
Often you do not notice yourself how much is changing. Only when you look back a week later do you see that something that did not work then now happens by itself. I really needed that looking back. It gave me the perseverance to keep going, however hard it was.
The nights
She barely slept that first night. I slept on the sofa for a few days so I was nearby, because the moment I went upstairs she started crying. Not now and then, but without a single pause.
If your dog has pauses between the crying, he can still calm himself down. If there are no pauses, he is in real panic and will not get out of it on his own. That is the difference between pushing through and going too far.
Those first few nights I slept about two hours myself. After that a bit was added every night. Not better all at once, just a little more each night.
The pen around the crate
On day two I got a pen and put it around her crate. That meant she did not have to be in the crate, but she could choose it. That difference turned out to be big. Meanwhile I slowly made the crate itself nicer: through the day I threw kibble in, and I fed her in there too.
How you build that association with a dog who does not trust his crate is in Dog won't go in the crate.
The pen was immediately much better for her. After a week she sometimes went and lay in her crate by herself.
The chair
During the day it was hard on both of us. Whenever I was awake I sat on a chair close to the pen, to teach her that nothing had to happen. At first she just cried through it. But at some point she started copying me: I did nothing, so she did nothing.
That chair eventually became the resting chair. If she was in her pen, she cried until I sat down. Then she knew: now we lie down and do nothing.
Biting got her nothing
Coco bit a lot. At my clothes, at my hands, at anything that came past. That is the one thing I did do something about straight away that week, because the longer it pays off for her, the more normal it becomes.
What I did was simple: the moment she bit, I stopped giving attention and ignored her. No "ouch", no pushing her away, no turning it into a game. I became boring. Only when she stopped was there something to be had again.
Visitors had to ignore her first
From day one I asked visitors for the same thing: no eye contact, no stroking, no talking to her. Only once she was calm was she allowed to be greeted. And if she started biting, the visitor had to ignore her straight away and become boring too.
I wanted that clear from the start, for two reasons. Visitors then change nothing about what her day looks like, and it stays true: with somebody else as well, biting gets her no attention. One person who actually enjoys it is enough to set your progress back a step.
What I deliberately did not do was send her to her place when visitors came. She did not know that place well enough yet. Something new is happening in the house, and asking for something that is not solid yet at exactly that moment is asking too much.
And I kept the visits small. One person at a time, and no more than once or twice a week.
One time my mother came over, because I had slept so little that I really had to catch up. She did exactly what I did: Coco in her pen, her on the chair. And it worked. Coco understood that nothing was going to happen there, precisely because she already knew that chair from me.
How you have visitors over without your dog going over the top is coming in a separate explanation about visitors. It is not there yet.
The cat went upstairs
My cat Mowgli was already living here before Coco arrived. He had known dogs for years, and he had seen her a few times before she moved in, back when she was not this tense. But this version of her was simply too much for him.
His solution was as practical as it was clear: he went upstairs and stayed there. That lasted a while.
That is exactly why I never let Coco go upstairs. Upstairs was not an option, and it never became one either. I wanted Mowgli to have a place Coco did not come. And once I was sleeping in my own bed again, that stayed the moment for my cat and me.
Mowgli did start asking for more attention in the meantime, which makes sense: normally he was with me all day. I really did feel guilty about that at the time. In the end it came good completely. Animals feel it when the house gets calmer, and then a cat like that comes over to say hello again by himself. How that went you read in the weeks after this one.
How you let a dog and a cat get used to each other is coming in a separate explanation. It is not there yet.
Outside every hour
She was not house-trained. At her previous owner she always had access to the garden, so her bladder had never been trained and she had never learned to signal that she needed to go.
So we went outside every hour, always to exactly the same patch of grass. Only the way there was already too much. The moment we got into the hallway she pulled at the coats, and outside she ran circles and wound herself right up. The outside world was simply too many things at once: so much was happening that she had no idea what to do with it.
After a few minutes she was spent again. So I kept it short: a quick pee and back inside. And that gave the days their rhythm. Doing nothing on the chair, quickly outside, doing nothing on the chair again.
Where we stood at the end of the week
Sounds could still startle her. The difference was that she recovered from them faster and faster.
Around day five I slept upstairs again for the first time. She still cried, but every night she calmed down a bit quicker, and in the end she slept through. Finally a night's sleep, for both of us.
What I take from it
In that first week I taught her nothing that looks like an exercise. All I did was make sure she could rest and that nothing was asked of her. That is exactly what made everything after it possible.