Tips for Rescuing Stray Dogs Safely

Video Transcript

"I'm Sylva Kelegian from Expert Village. I'm here with Simone Luncher from Pet Mania in Burbank and together we've rescued thousands of animals. A lot of dogs we find on the street that have been abandoned and they're absolutely terrified of people, terrified of everything. I keep a loop in my car. It's called a vet loop and the vets use them when you bring your dog to the vet and it goes right around their neck. What I do is I keep food in my car, I go up to the dog, I put food in my hand and the loop right here and I put my hand through the loop so the dog will come up and eat out of my hand if he's very, very scared, I can throw the loop over his head and get him. I've gotten hundreds of dogs like that so if you're a dog lover and you want to go to the vet and ask for a free loop and put some dog food in your car, keep it in there and the next dog you see that won't come up to you, get him that way. If he will come up to you, that's great, then you can just put a leash and put him in your car. We've rescued so many animals that are damaged. Damaged by people being very very horrible to them. We've rescued animals that have been kicked and beaten and burned and thrown out of windows and it's amazing how these animals can come around with a little love and tenderness. Some of them take a long time but talk about for instance Goldie, the one we rescued out of the park and how terrified she was at first and she was starved and emaciated. Yes, Goldie was one of those very very scared, scared emaciated dogs and when she came into my house, it only took really a couple of days to actually like my dogs and interact with me and the cats and everything and now she's great. It's just, TLC is all it does, TLC, good food and patience and that's all they need. A lot of love. And actually just recently fostered a couple of wild dogs at my house, about four months, five months old and never had actually human interaction and the dogs were terrified of me and my son but you know they were actually, they liked my dogs so what I did, I just let them run around being with my dogs and my dogs follow me wherever I go so I have the wild dogs following me as well and it took maybe like two weeks at the most and the dogs were just wonderful. They couldn't get enough being petted and getting treats and rolling over and they were actually both placed in loving homes as well so it just takes patience and it just takes a lot of TLC. And when you adopt a dog, give that dog time because a dog gets into a new environment and two days later I get called saying oh, he's not doing this, he's not doing that, we can't keep him anymore. I say to the people give it at least two to three weeks, you will see an amazing difference and sure enough, most of them will hold out and they'll call and they'll say you know what, you're right, all it takes was time. So give you animal time when you get it from the shelter, wherever you get him from, give him time to acclimate and come around. It's really important. Time is usually all it takes. And love. And patience."