In less than a week these puppies will head to their forever homes! I surely won’t forget this crew—it has been an equally heartbreaking and heartfilling experience being their foster mom. By this time with every litter I am ready for them to go – they have outgrown our little puppy room and the work of caring for them is enormous. Still, I am trying to treasure it and working hard to give them the very best start to the very best lives.
Here are this week’s entries in their entirety. If you’d like to read them in real time, be sure to follow my public writer page, Cara Sue Achterberg. And if you want daily live videos of their antics, be sure to join the Another Good Dog Facebook Group.
Diary of a Rescue Day 35:
Busy day for me. Pups are being supervised by my son Ian and his girlfriend AJ. Every young person should have to wrangle puppies and pick up a little poop in their lives.
They’ve had a good day and gotten plenty of attention in my absence!
Diary of a Rescue Day 36:
The beautiful weather (finally!) means the pups get lots of outdoor time. They love it, so their days are comprised of meals followed by long outdoor play sessions and then extended naps back in the pen. It makes for much easier clean up!
Many of the pups are getting matched up with adopters this weekend- it’s exciting to learn about their new families. But weird because With this litter (unlike all my others) I probably won’t meet them until the day they take them home!
#adoptdontshop #choosetorescue
Diary of a Rescue Day 37:
Today the pups met a cat! And bravely ran through a tunnel. Lots of new adventures daily….
Diary of a Rescue Day 38:
I weighed the puppies today and my, have they grown!! Mr Misto is 7 pounds 8 ounces!! Little Cinderella is 4 pounds 12 ounces. Everyone else is around six pounds with Dolly close to 7 pounds. They are such fun pups- gaining confidence and coordination every day.
They seem to be catching up after their slow start and likely will be the medium size dogs they should be.
Everyone has an adopter except one puppy and the application for her is in process so hopefully soon she will be spoken for.
These pups have been quite an adventure and, as usual, I have learned even more.
#choosetorescue and #savealife
Diary of a Rescue Day 39:
It was cold and gray today but we managed a few outside adventures. Nancy stopped by and took more puppy pictures. We are hoping to create a set of notecards from them that we can sell to raise money for Who Will Let the Dogs Out?
Tomorrow will be even more of a challenge- it’s supposed to rain all day and the puppy room gets smaller as the puppies get bigger. They are also getting noisier which creates challenges for the two people working from this house who gave conference calls! Anyone with good ideas for entertaining puppies in confined spaces- please share them!
#puppyentertainer #rainraingoaway
Diary of a Rescue Day 40:
It was a long day today. I couldn’t take the puppies outside at all because it was so cold and rainy. So I tried to keep them entertained with the empty dog food bag, a big box, peanut butter flavored bubbles, foam pipe insulators, and a pile of empty plastic Gatorade bottles. It was hit and miss- they are a tough crowd.
The biggest excitement we had was when OPH volunteer, Jen, came by to microchip all the pups. The microchip needle is huge and there were a few that fussed but it was for their own good so they will never get lost.
Their chips have two numbers- one for OPH and one that their adopters will register. Once an OPH dog, always an OPH dog. That way if a dog ever gets lost and their family has moved or didn’t register their chip, OPH will be contacted to help reunite our dog with its adopter.
All nine puppies have adopters! One more week til Gotcha Day!
#happilyeverafter coming right up
#microchipeverydog
Thanks for reading!
Cara
If you’d like regular updates of all my foster dogs past and present, plus occasional dog care/training tips from OPH training, be sure to join the Facebook group, Another Good Dog.
For information on me, my writing, and books, visit CaraWrites.com. I have a new book, One Hundred Dogs and Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues, coming out in July. If it sounds like something you’d like to read, I’d be beyond grateful if you’d consider preordering it. Preorders contribute to the success of the book, not only giving me and my publisher some peace of mind but hopefully attracting media attention.
And if you’d like to know where all these dogs come from and how you can help solve the crisis of too many unwanted dogs in our shelters, visit WhoWillLetTheDogsOut.org.
Our family fosters through the all-breed rescue, Operation Paws for Homes, a network of foster homes in Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and south-central PA.
If you can’t get enough foster dog stories, check out my book: Another Good Dog: One Family and Fifty Foster Dogs . It’s available anywhere books are sold.
I love to hear from readers and dog-hearted people! Email me at carasueachterberg@gmail.com.
Another Good Dog™ 
Nice post. I like your hashtag “rainraingoaway”. I can relate to how challenging it becomes to care for more than one puppy in an enclosed space as they get bigger and their personalities come out more and more each day. Ours and my aunt and uncle’s retrievers, who were sisters in a litter, spent a lot of time together after my aunt and uncle returned home from their 2008 cruise to AK. Early on, they started competing for dominance, making it difficult for my mom and aunt to keep them together for too long. With some help from the instructor at their obedience classes, my family was able to let this phase pass, and eventually the dogs got along together. I imagine that the puppies you currently have get into occasional audible scraps as they grow and their personalities grow with them? The puppy pandemonium will soon be over, and perhaps you can take a break for a while, just as you were content to do earlier in the year. And thank goodness for microchipse… I like OPH’s approach to them, including their number on the chip so that the dog is forever connected to them and their large group of dog lovers. Hopefully all of these puppies’ adoptions will permanently stick. Keep doing your part for man’s best friend.
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