Welcome Home, Rescue Dog: An Interactive Guide & Keepsake Journal

An illustrated, practical guide and keepsake journal for new rescue-dog adopters filled with a positive-reinforcement approach to building trust, confidence, and connection.

You brought your rescue dog home. Now comes the wonderful part: getting to know each other.

The first weeks and months with a newly adopted dog are full of mysteries. What makes their tail wag? What helps them relax? What are those ears, eyes, and glances trying to say?

Welcome Home, Rescue Dog is part practical guide and part write-in keepsake — a place to learn your dog's language, nurture their unique style, head off common challenges, and build a relationship of trust, cooperation, and joy — plus record once-in-a-lifetime moments while they are still happening.

DESIGNED TO WRITE IN: This illustrated print book includes space to answer prompts, record discoveries, and preserve memories by hand. Available in print only.

INSIDE THESE PAGES YOU WILL:

• Learn to read canine body language: tails, ears, and the polite signals dogs use to say "not right now"
• Set up a Zen Zone, a cozy retreat where your dog can decompress
• Recognize the phases of adjustment and what you may be feeling during each one
• Map your dog's ideal day: sleep, sniffing, chewing, movement, companionship
• Try five-minute lessons and mark each one on a star chart
• Discover your dog's style. A Shadow? A Hermit? A Zoomer? A Hustler?
• Turn detective when a behavior puzzles you, using a six-point checklist
• See a frustrating behavior reframed as the strength it might really be
• Record milestones: the first soft eye contact, the first time they invite play
• Keep care team contacts, vet visit notes, and a medication log in one place

GUIDED BY HEARTS

Six simple habits for bringing out the best in your dog: HEAL the body. ENRICH the brain. ALIGN the environment. RELATE with kindness. TEACH compassionately. SUPPORT the individual.

First introduced in Wendy Lyons Sunshine's Tender Paws, winner of the ASJA Book Award and the Dog Writers Association of America's Maxwell Medallion, HEARTS offers a trauma-informed framework for making thoughtful choices with your individual dog in mind.

Grounded in positive reinforcement and reward-based methods, all training and handling guidance in Welcome Home, Rescue Dog aligns with the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior's Position Statement on Humane Dog Training.

Warm, unhurried, and free of jargon, Welcome Home, Rescue Dog fits an eight-week-old puppy who is all teeth just as well as an eight-year-old rescue with a mysterious past. Read it in order or open to whatever page suits the day. Fill in every prompt or simply sit with the ideas.

"Lots of my clients would have given their left arm for a trainer to 'move in' after they adopted their dog. This book comes close."
— Justine Schuurmans, LFDM, CPDT-KA, creator of the Dial Method and host of "Your Dog's Not Broken"

A thoughtful gift for gotcha day or for any adopter who just came home from the shelter with more love than answers.

You may not know their past, but you can make their future bright.

Wendy Lyons Sunshine, MA, FDM, writes about homecoming--what children and dogs need in the fragile early weeks after they arrive, and how caregivers can meet them there. Sunshine is an award-winning writer and journalist whose books include Welcome Home, Rescue Dog: An Interactive Guide & Keepsake Journal and Tender Paws: How Science-Based Parenting Can Transform Our Relationship with Dogs. Endorsed by Dr. Temple Grandin, Tender Paws won the American Society of Journalists & Authors Book Award and the Dog Writers Association of America's Maxwell Medallion. Sunshine's earlier work includes the bestseller The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family, an ASJA Outstanding Book of the Year that has sold more than 360,000 copies and been translated into multiple languages. A Family Dog Mediator and shelter board member with a master's degree in technical communication, she combines fact-based rigor with engaging, compassionate storytelling.