Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: foster dogs

  • I like dogs better than I like people

    Both foster puppies have gone to their forever homes.  This was a huge amount of work, for multiple reasons.  Mainly I realize how bad I am at the people side of rescue.  As a rabid introvert, needing to answer so many emails, do so much marketing, and meet so many people, in order to find them the right home, was just EXHAUSTING.  I’d finish the end of each day and just collapse into bed, and every morning was filled with dread.  The puppies are major energy sucks, but it is nothing in comparison to the people side.

    When I did all the fostering for ACT V, they did almost all of the people work.  The only people I met and talked to had already been through discussions with ACT V.  ACT V had already determined that they were at least a good enough match it was worth it to set up a meeting.  ACT V had already checked references.  All I needed to do was be there for the meet and greet, and then provide my opinions afterward.

    This time I had to field each email, and no matter how unlikely it seemed, I replied to each one to start up a conversation, just in case it really was the right match for one of the puppies.  The experience reinforced my impression that most people are flaky and awful, but it also reinforced my belief that when it involves something important, don’t rely on first impressions alone.  One of the pups ended up local, but the other ended up in Las Vegas, which I really didn’t expect.  Each contact from farther afield was handled hesitantly but ever so slightly open to the concept that a person from farther away could satisfy my suspicious nature. However, he did not go to the fetish model who also wanted to take him to live in Las Vegas.  No judgement on the job, although a puppy chewing up those shoes would get expensive, but she was uncooperative about basic policies for adoption and didn’t leave me feeling confident.

    So, with that, I’ve fostered 14 dogs and 2 cats, to date, and only kept one critter, which is not a bad record.

    Next up – more cats?

  • Foster Time

    So, I’m back to fostering dogs again.  I didn’t post about the first one this year because I almost immediately found a great home for her.

    I’ve got a pair of puppies in now, and am drowning in all things puppy.   Mr. Watson isn’t happy.  For that matter, Mr. Tori isn’t all that happy either.

    CharlieThe truth is, this is incredibly bad timing.  I have NO time to do the puppy dance right now.  But it was a favor for a friend of a friend kind of thing, and the other options were not good, and it isn’t the puppies’ fault that they are homeless.

    So, two puppies and possibly a third on the way, depending on how it goes.

    They are big. The person didn’t get them to me when they were young enough to just be in that stupidly cute puppy phase that people fall in love with.  They are approaching 20 weeks old, and really I need a second foster.  They are too old to still be together, it would be better for them from a behavioral development standpoint to be separate now.

    To a large extent all a dog needs when looking for a home, is a place to safely stay, somebody to feed it, and somebody clean up after it.  That’s why shelters do work.  Foster homes means that at least they don’t have the added stress of being around all that commotion, which is very difficult on some dog temperaments.  I really try to do more though.  I try to have a foster dog boot camp, doing everything I can to help them on their road to being the best dog they can be, so that they are more adoptable, and more importantly, so that stay adopted.  People rarely admit they are the type to give up when the going gets rough while they are out looking for a new dog, but even rescues with rigorous screening procedures get returns.

    So, I’ve got two puppies here, and we are working on crate training,  potty training them, teaching them to walk on leash, teaching them, Sit, Down, No, Drop it, Off.  They are still puppies, so everything they see goes in their mouth.  Their mouths are full of sharp little needles.

    linus5Yesterday morning, I was trying to wrangle them both outside for their morning potty break at the same time.  I was running late, and in theory would definitely be more convenient if I took them both out at once.  We aren’t having in house accidents, but I am very restrictive about the time they can spend loose inside.  Outside, I have specific areas where I want them to go to the bathroom.  I’m not happy with just anywhere.  So, I was out there leading them to the approved potty area, when Linus decided he’d walked far enough and started to pee.  I said no, and kept moving him toward the right area, but then Charlie tripped me, and as I tried to get my balance, Linus started to pee again, this time down my leg, pee filling up my tennis shoe.  In case you were wondering, it is very warm and unpleasant feeling.  I had to still get him over to wear he could potty and be praised.  Got Charlie pottied, and then got the hose to spray down the areas that he was not supposed to pee, like, my foot for instance.

    When it was time to leave the house I couldn’t find my other pair of shoes.  Pee shoes were out of commission while I tried to get them clean.  The other shoes… well I had a memory of having to take them away from a puppy and putting the shoes somewhere out of reach, but I couldn’t figure out where.  10 minutes later, I needed to get help from another pair of eyes.  We finally found them, out of puppy reach as predicted.

    Last night, I’m ashamed to say, he then managed to pee on my foot again, yep, another pair of shoes down.  You know the saying.  Pee on me once, shame on you, pee on me twice, so much pee on me.  Yes, I was trying to shortcut having to walk them both separately.  Today I’ve done much better, only taking each one out on their own so far.  Soon they will get a play break to play together, but like I said, developmentally it is better for them to be apart at this point.  I let them play together because I am lazy and it tires them out faster.

     

  • Happy Tails

    Our Fosters from Ms Tori on Vimeo.

  • Eleven

    Apparently I could only make it to number 11 before having a failed foster.

    Welcome to the family, baby boy.

    I think we’ll be calling him Watson.

  • Sitting and Thinking

    So, yesterday I teased that I had other news that was too big to just tack on the bottom of that post.

    It wasn’t really a sweeps week “to be continued” type of tease. I just have all this shit on my mind, but my mind hasn’t finished chewing on it yet. I know some of what it means, but I don’t know all of what it means.

    So, here you get a little glimpse into my life, mid thought process.

    I am typing this while sitting at the dining room table. At my feet, Indy is asleep. This is usual. She is asleep at my feet a large portion of the time that I am on my computer.

    Far less usual, and quite unexpectedly, there is a puppy asleep at my feet too.

    Webster.

    Webster is back. For reasons which are totally understandable, and I agree with and support, but are not my reasons to tell. The family who had hoped to adopt Webster, has decided it isn’t what is best for him. He was with them for a week and they all had a wonderful time, but they came to a very difficult decision. They are doing what they think is best for the dog, which I totally respect.

    He left on a Sunday, and came back on the following Sunday. They were willing to foster him, but I wanted him back. I put this much in. I’d like to see it through to all three orphans finding their forever homes.

    It is time to figure out what “I might have wanted to keep him” means, now that it is an option.

    I am certain there are other families out there who would love him just as much as we do. I am certain there are no other families out there who would love him more. I knew both of those things about Bear too. There is more to it than that, as I so difficultly had to stand by when letting Bear leave. I must ask myself, “Is there somebody that is better for him due to practical life circumstances?” and “How exactly does he impact the lives of the pets we are already committed to?” Most of all, I need to make sure that I don’t let the pangs of regret I feel for “having” to let Bear go, allow me to lie to myself about these answers. It would be easy to trick myself, just so that I can avoid a difficult goodbye.

    That is where I am at today, with a puppy curled up at my feet, right next to Indy.

  • I’m A Winner!

    Now that I feel a bit like Stuart Smalley, made all the more creepy by the fact he is my senator now…

    A cool email arrived in my inbox today, letting me know that I won a 3 month subscription to an earrings of the month club.  The earrings are handcrafted by the lovely and talented woman who blogs at Honey & Ollie, and the prize was courtesy of a contest held by Simply Rebecca.

    I’m really excited about the prize because I would have LOVED to have bought a subscription for myself, but am in $ saving mode right now, and could not justify treating myself to that at this time.

    In other news, check out Zoie’s post featuring pictures that she took of Mindy.  In a way, it isn’t “other news” because, while the contest was decided by a random number generator, my comment which randomly won was about my newest friend, whom I met because of the fostering.

    In other, other, news…

    No, that really deserves its own post.

    Apparently, along with being a winner, I am also a tease today.

  • In the Middle Was Webster

    One of the rescue founders took an immediate liking to Webster, so when he arrived at my house, he already had a hold placed on him, and he never went up on petfinder.

    In the first couple of days I was more focused on Mindy, and then Darby when she got back from the vet. Webster was the easy one, not that anything about it was actually easy, but in comparison, the one that ate easily was definitely a bit less stressful.

    A few more days in, and their personalities started to peek out, and he was the first one to wag just because he saw me. My heart melted. He got bigger and odder looking, with a head shape that spoke of a touch of something else thrown into the mix besides the screaming signs of GSD and Husky. He was adventurous like Darby, but less independent. He was very snuggly like Mindy, but more independent.

    I’m kind of crazy about him.

    I might have wanted to keep him. I don’t really know. I can’t really know, because I didn’t have the option. Wanting something when you can’t have it, is a different thing. I know I didn’t want him because somebody else wanted him, that just isn’t one of my triggers. I might have accidentally gotten too attached though because he was already spoken for. He was safe. Since I didn’t have to worry about accidentally keeping him, I might not have put up the proper “not my dog” barriers that I’ve always worked to maintain with the others. When they have nobody the urge to keep them all is definitely there. A dog without a family makes me feel so sad for the dog.

    However it happened, it happened. I felt like, if I could keep him, maybe I would. Indy liked him. She was tolerant of all of them, but he was the only one she ever tried to engage with. I was pretty sure that he could be raised to continue being great with the cats, since he was so young (Bear and Xander had a problem with each other). Also, really, this was just unique. I had bottle fed these little guys and gotten up every 20 minutes to deal with all the poo. Somewhere in all that, apparently too much oxytocin was releasing, because I felt intensely maternal about this set of fosters.

    So, Webster left on Sunday, a day later than planned because of a vaccine side effect.  Several days after Darby left the orphanage, and one day before we sent Mindy off on a plane.

    I cried.

    I cried for London

    and Bear

    and I just cried.

  • Mindy’s New Friend

    Mindy finds out that her family got another puppy for her to play with.

  • And Then There Were None

    Do you hear that?

    The house is so quiet.

    It makes me feel anxious, because I haven’t done anything for the puppies lately, so they should be noisily complaining, and the silence leaves me with a repetitive flutter in my gut that something is wrong.

    Yesterday, I dropped my daughter off at a class and came home for an hour and a half of couch potato-ing before needing to pick her up again.  It was the first time I’ve been alone in the house without any other people since January 10th. Holy crap, that is a lot of people time for somebody like me. I couldn’t swim in the silence because of the feelings of puppy anxiety.

    Time for life to return to some value of normal. Whatever that means.

    Darby went home on Wednesday. On Thursday Mindy got sick. I called the vet and described the symptoms and she told me she was having a reaction to one of the vaccines. The vet came during her lunch hour to bring me some medicine for Mindy and an hour after she left Webster had symptoms too. On Saturday the call came from Darby’s family that she’d been sick for two days.

    The vet was not pleased, and called the manufacturer and is returning this particular batch. They were not violently ill, and are going to be fine, but it was frustrating and inconvenient, at the very least. Nothing like taking three totally healthy happy little puppies and making them all sick while trying to prevent them from getting sick to raise my stress level a bit.

    Webster was supposed to go home Saturday, but he ended up staying until Sunday so the vet could take a last look at him. I thought Mindy was going home on Sunday, but that was due to a typo (not mine) so she actually left yesterday.

    I guess the big happy news is that Mindy went to live in California. This is a long story.

    On July 13th, 1997, I met a family of three, and they rapidly became a very important part of my life. The female portion (D) of that trio has been mentioned in the past, for example, here and here. Their family of three turned into a family of 5 over the years. The three children have been asking for a dog, because that is what children do. D is not a dog person. She didn’t dislike dogs. She has taken care of my dogs for me when I needed it, and taken care of other people’s dogs, but she didn’t have any desire for her own dog.

    The kids swore that if they got a dog they would take care of EVERYTHING and D wouldn’t have to do anything. Right. Sure.

    Back in December my friend who took Ellie was going on vacation. She arranged for a petsitter to come and stay at her house to take care of her three dogs, but as the vacation approached, we realized that Ellie still wasn’t getting along well enough with one of her other dogs to make that a good idea. Trusting a pet sitter to deal with that kind of dynamic just wasn’t reasonable. However, the boarding situations available really were not ideal for Ellie. So, I asked D if she’d be willing to take Ellie in for a couple of weeks (paid, of course).

    D agreed. For one thing, Ellie needed it, and for another, we had a plan. She would assign the kids to take care of Ellie, with the promise of all that money at the end. The kids would not take care of Ellie, D would do it all and keep the money, then the next time the kids said “we’ll take care of EVERYTHING, you won’t have to do anything” she would feel less guilty for laughing in their little dog wanting faces.

    Ellie, no surprise, was a PITA. She got into the trash, because that is what Ellie does. Then her digestive system completely revolted, explosively, all over D’s carpet, because that is what digestive systems do when fed too much trash. Ellie was also absolutely sweet and adorable, because that is what Ellie is.

    Three weeks later when Ellie went home, instead of a long sigh of relief, D found herself missing her.

    Which is what led to her telling me she was thinking about getting a dog. I assigned her and the kids a bunch of reading. I went over the pros and cons of dog ownership. I asked her to make a list of what she was looking for in a dog. I warned her not to go out shopping for a dog, but instead to just be open to getting a dog when the right one came along. You don’t want to go out with the plan to pick a dog, because then you’ll simply pick the one there that comes the closest to being what you want. Instead, it is best to wait until the one that is actually right presents itself.

    So, she started reading her assigned homework. She made a list of things she wanted in a dog. The list included items like:

    • around 25 lbs
    • short hair that doesn’t shed much
    • an adult, about 2 or 3 years old

    Time passed. The right dog hadn’t presented itself yet, but she was taking my advice and not being in a rush.

    By the time Mindy was about 4 weeks old, her developing personality started speaking to me, and it kept telling me she’d fit in to that family really well. This was a silly notion, because she was:

    • expected to be about 50lbs
    • is a husky mix and will do so much more than just shed
    • is not going to be an adult for a couple of long destructive years

    I thought about it a couple more days, and then sent D an email, acknowledging all the bad, but explaining I had a feeling. She wrote back and said she’d been having the feeling too, from the first photos of the three of them.

    They talked it over and decided to fill out an application. Other local people applied for her too. We waited anxiously to find out what the rescue would decide.

    Mindy is an adorable and very adoptable little puppy. Ellie had been available for ages without any interest, and she had health conditions which made her less adoptable and made California a much more suitable climate for her. It is frightening to send a dog so far away. What if the new family changes their mind? It is especially iffy seeming when it comes to sending a dog to somebody who has never had a dog before.

    The rescue decided to trust my recommendation, for which I am very glad. Nobody wanted Mindy to be flying in cargo, so that means she needed to head out to California after she was old enough to fly, but before she got too big to qualify to go as carry-on. This left a very narrow window. D and her daughter came out for a long weekend, to get some how to care for a puppy training and to fly Mindy home with them.

    I was very anxious all afternoon yesterday while Mindy was in flight, but it turns out she did very well on the flight. The wait for the shuttle to the parking lot was a bit rougher (so noisy outside at LAX) and she cried and peed in her carrier. However, by last night she was safely at her new home and is getting settled. I know she’ll be very happy with them, they are really good family for this little people focused pup.

    Best of all, I will get to be in touch with Mindy for her whole life.

    There is stuff to say about Webster too, but that will wait for another post.

  • One Down, Two to Go

    Darby has gone home.

    Her mom came by to pick her up, appropriately armed with a crate that is almost too small for Darby. Still completely suitable currently, but seriously, Darby will outgrow it so fast. This is really a big deal to me because it is the same size crate I used to keep all three of the puppies in together! Wow.

    First we did paperwork, and I told her all about the feeding schedule and amounts, and sleeping schedule. I don’t expect them to keep the same schedule, but just so that they can make a smooth transition. She asked a lot of questions, both about current things, and about how Darby came to live with me to start with.

    Then it was time to bring Darby down and hand her over. I came around the corner with Darby and the woman’s eyes lit up with joy. She took Darby in her arms and quietly told her, “I love you already.”

    Darby greeting her new mom.

    We put Darby’s first collar on her, a pretty pink collar hand-me-down from her new sister, a Cavalier, who has outgrown it. I had to make it smaller so it would fit, but I know Darby will outgrow it rapidly too.

    I was thanked very warmly for taking such good care of her and raising such a wonderful puppy. I was hugged tightly. I was told to call any time, and that I was welcome to visit Darby at their home.

    Maybe I will.