Should I Rehome My Dog? Six Questions Before You Decide

I have rehomed three dogs. Each went to a friend's family, each is loved, and each still left a mark on our house that has not fully gone. None of the three did anything wrong. The house was not ready for them, and by the time I understood that, the decision had already been made in exhaustion.

If you are asking this question tonight, the first thing I would say is that you are allowed to ask it. The second is: not tonight.

Before you decide, not before you give up

The words matter. "Before you give up" assumes the only good outcome is keeping him. "Before you decide" assumes you are a reasonable adult facing a real decision, which you are. Some dogs should be rehomed, and doing it well and early is a responsible act, not a shameful one. Other dogs are living through a bad fortnight in a house that has not organised itself yet, and would stay happily if it did. The six questions are there to tell the two apart.

The six questions

1. Is this about the hours, or about the dog? Exhaustion, mess, broken nights and the feeling of having made a mistake are about the hours. Hours can be shared and planned. A frightened person, a child who is not safe, a dog whose needs are beyond any adult in the house: those are about the match.

2. Who has been doing the work, and has it been written down? If one person has carried everything, you do not yet know whether the dog is too much. You know that one person is. Share the list for two weeks, by name, and ask the question again.

3. Has the dog had one set of words and one routine? A dog who hears five versions of every instruction and has no fixed pattern to his day behaves like a dog with no fixed pattern to his day. Give him a week of one routine before you judge him.

4. Has anyone qualified seen him? Not a video. A trainer or behaviourist in your home, watching your dog with your family. In one UK charity's review of 1,131 requests to give up a dog for behaviour reasons, advice was accepted in about a quarter of the cases. Be in that quarter before you decide, and ask the question again afterwards.

5. Is anyone in the house unsafe or genuinely afraid? If the honest answer is yes, and the house cannot be arranged so that they are protected, that is a real answer and it carries weight. Rehoming a dog to protect a person is the right decision.

6. What will be different in the next home? If you cannot name it, the dog may not be the problem. If you can, you are already describing what he needs.

The timing of the real decision

Doubt comes early. In a survey of 500 owners, one in four had considered rehoming their puppy within the first two weeks. But the moment dogs actually lose their homes usually comes much later: a US study found dogs given up to shelters had been in their homes for a median of eighteen months. That gap is where small problems that nobody handled grew into the reason. If you are in the early weeks, you are in the window where the handling still works.

If the answer is to rehome

Do it well. Go back to the breeder or rescue first; good ones take dogs back, and said so when you collected him. Then friends and family you can see him with. Then a reputable rescue. Never a free listing. Write down his routine, his words and what he is used to, and hand it over with him. The dog is not the failure, and he deserves a next home that starts better than this one did.

If the answer is to stay

Then it is a reset, not a continuation. New rota, one set of words, one routine, a professional in the house, and a date in a month to ask the six questions again. A bad week is not a verdict. It is the week the plan gets written.

Free help

The free pack A bad week is not a verdict holds the six questions with space to answer them, and an honest next step for each answer: mohamedabukhadra.com/help/bad-week.

My book After You Say Yes to the Dog is a set of practical manuals for the hard weeks, and Before You Say Yes to the Dog has the chapter on the reset, written for families who are already in it.

Related: Thinking of Returning the Puppy to the Breeder? Read This First · I Do Everything for the Dog. How the Work Lands on One Person

I am a father, not a trainer, a vet or a behaviourist. This is what worked in my house. Anything that touches safety, check with a professional who can see your dog and your home.

Sources: Powdrill-Wells, Taylor and Melfi, 2021, Animals 11(10):2766; Zigzag survey of 500 owners, 2025, reported in The Independent; Powell et al., 2021, Frontiers in Veterinary Science 8.