Our adventures as a foster dog family
What a special week it is for ten lucky families! All of the PA Pups went home to forever families last week.
It is always fun when families come to pick up their pups – so much excitement and joy! Of course, that joy is likely tempered when they get home and the whining and housetraining and teething begins in earnest, but from my end it’s always fun! Continue reading “Who Doesn’t Love a Happy Ending?”
The countdown has begun. Puppies will begin leaving tomorrow!
Normally, we have ‘adoption day’ on a Saturday and all the puppies leave the same day. This keeps it simple for me and less disruptive for the family. I like them all to go on the same day so that I’m not left with one crying puppy.
This will be the first time the puppies leave their siblings and it will be their first experience ‘all alone.’ There tends to be a great deal of Continue reading “Last Day of Puppies!”
I’ve mentioned before that puppies are a lot of work. So I thought I’d give you a peek into a typical day of caring for ten large puppies.
5:15-5:45am
Someone, somewhere in the house flushes a toilet and the puppies wake up. The pipes run through the wall in the puppy room which is our converted mudroom. It is somewhat miraculous that they don’t seem to waken if the flush happens earlier than five. Puppies commence yipping for breakfast, pooping, fighting, and zooming through poop while yipping for breakfast and fighting.
5:45am
Nick gets up and has breakfast, completely ignoring the puppies, and more amazingly, the smell of the puppies.
6am
I accept the fact that the puppies are not going back to sleep and Continue reading “A Day in the Life of a Puppy Foster”
Sometimes rescue is hard. Sometimes it doesn’t come easy.
As I put the final touches on my next book, due to the publisher December 1 (and if all goes well, released July 2020), I’ve spent a lot of time remembering one particular dog who changed my life. Gala was with us for over eleven months, but truly she has never left my heart.
The new book, One Hundred Dogs and Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (and yes, that is a mouthful and no, it wasn’t up to me), begins with Gala. Up until Gala, fostering had been mostly fun, occasionally stressful, but ultimately a win-win for all parties involved.
Gala challenged me, not just in terms of exposing how much I don’t know about dogs, but emotionally as I wrestled Continue reading “Sometimes it Don’t Come Easy…”
We survived our record-setting weekend.
Now we just have fourteen dogs. Which we’ve had before.
Gosh, this makes me sound like a dog-raving lunatic. Which maybe I am. Or at least I feel like one after this weekend.
Saying we fostered fifteen dogs this weekend is somewhat misleading since Continue reading “Fifteen Dogs in My House”
This week, I was reminded again when it comes to rescue—you can’t predict anything.
Or, at least, I can’t predict anything.
The wild ride began last Wednesday when Continue reading “A Puppy Hero”
It’s very hard for me to talk about my dog, Frankie.
But while I don’t talk about him, he is constantly on my heart; I see him everywhere.
Losing him and the way we lost him truly leveled me and to be honest, Continue reading “Miss Fanny Wiggles, My Girl”
Normally when I bring home a new foster dog there is an extended shut-down period – a time when the new foster is kept away from the other dogs, spends a lot of time in her crate, is kept on a leash all the time even when out of the crate (and confined to the kitchen). This generally lasts one to two weeks.
We started down that path with Fanny Wiggles, but Continue reading “Member of the Pack”
Today is Remember Me Thursday.
It’s a day to light a candle to remember the countless dogs who are waiting in shelters for a forever family or who have lost their lives while waiting.
Having just spent over a week visiting the shelters and Continue reading “Please Don’t Forget the Dogs Still Waiting”
It has been a long time since I brought in a new foster dog. April to be exact.
(Which makes me wonder what I’ve been writing on this blog for all these months!)
There is a very special dog in my kitchen. She arrives with a story that began back in June. A story that inspired me to return to Tennessee and go on to Alabama and to now explore more ways I can change the situation.
You may recognize her face… Continue reading “Home Again with a Stowaway”
Another Good Dog™ 