Our adventures as a foster dog family
This last week has been a tough one. Just like my beautiful tulips that were bright and healthy a few days ago and now droop and struggle in the below freezing temperatures, the puppies’ story changed drastically this week.
Below are the entries from our week in rescue. If you’d like to read them in real-time, you can follow the daily diary on my Facebook page, Cara Sue Achterberg, writer.
Diary of a Rescue Day 15: Continue reading “Diary of a Rescue Week Three: A Tough Development”
After spending nine days visiting shelters, rescues, dog pounds, and one awful flea market where they sold dogs and puppies, it was inevitable that I would come home from our Who Will Let the Dogs Out trip with a dog.
Mind you, I didn’t even take a crate with me on this trip. (It wouldn’t fit in our rental – Jeep’s look much bigger from the outside than the inside.)
Wednesday night, I finally hit a wall of exhaustion and emotion. I told Nancy in colorful language that I was finished with the trip, Continue reading “You Can’t Come Home Without a Dog”
And poof! He was gone.
I warned you we wouldn’t have Bo very long. They don’t make them much nicer. We had a fun week with him and packed in as much as we could, but on Sunday Bo left for his forever home.
It’s a great home with Continue reading “Fosterless”
I’ve always liked dogs.
Liked them.
I wasn’t necessarily a ‘dog person.’ We always had a dog when I was growing up. A steady stream of strays and dogs that just happened into our lives. Truly, I never gave it much thought. I liked cats better. Especially once I hit young adulthood and lived in an apartment.
But now, somehow, dogs have taken over my life. My days, really my hours, revolve around dogs. Currently, we have four here at the house. Two are permanent residents and two are foster dogs only here for a spell awaiting the moment when their forever families find them.
As I write, Continue reading “If I Never Fostered Dogs….”
Meet our current (about to change) roster:
Hula, who you will remember arrived deathly thin, riddled with worms and nursing three puppies, is a new dog. She has gained weight, her coat has a nice gloss, and there are no traces of her mommy-life. She is full-on puppy and always ready to play. She is also always ready to steal socks. She pilfers them out of dirty laundry baskets and from where they hide, abandoned in a ball under the couch. Once in her possession, she challenges Frankie or Flannery to a game of tug of war.
They stretch the sock into unimaginable proportions, and then, Continue reading “You Can’t Tell the Players without a Program”
Our little pack has settled in. Brady calls them my entourage, as all four dogs—our Frankie and Gracie, plus fosters Flannery and Hula, follow me from room to room. As I sit at my desk now, Hula is lounging in her crate behind me, Gracie has claimed the sun spot on the carpet near the door, and Frankie and Flannery are squeezed together on the dog bed.
Normally, we live in a gated community. One baby gate sections off the hallway to the puppy room, in addition to the fence that fills the doorway of the puppy room (the flannel sheet hanging over it traps the heat inside and keeps the room warmer, it also allows the pups to get away with all manner of naughtiness).
These gates will come down in just a week and a half when all three pups go to their forever homes.
Another baby gate separates the kitchen from the rest of the house.
This is where our adult foster dogs usually reside. That gate will remain closed until Continue reading “Our Gated Community”
Without Oreo the house feels empty.
In fact, after he left on Saturday with his new family, Frankie spent the rest of the morning looking for his pal. He ran up and down the stairs and wanted to go out in the playyard to look and then back in the house to make the rounds again. It was a good thing we had Sip for a Cause on our calendar that night to distract all of us.
Some dogs are just special. Not that I haven’t loved every dog I’ve fostered, but some of them burrow a little deeper into your heart.
I saw something on Facebook about the pain you endure as a foster mom yesterday. It said – Continue reading “The Tears Are More Than Worth It”
“Ah. I can’t do this anymore!” I wailed at Nick after I cleaned up puppy diarrhea coated on every square inch of the puppy pen, every toy, every fence.
“You know,” Nick observed from where he sat with Oreo watching football with a beer in his hand, “You reach this point with every litter.”
He’s right.
I know I post all the fun and cuteness and make it look like puppies are the best thing ever, but here’s the God’s-honest truth: Continue reading “It’s Worth All the Poop (really)”
It’s hard to write about the dogs when I’m not with the dogs, but I’ll try. I’m actually in a California hotel room recovering from my brief brush with Hollywood. If you’d like to read about that adventure, you can find it on my other blog, My Life In Paragraphs.
The drama continues with Oreo. Continue reading “Should He Stay or Should He Go Now?”
I’m home again now and only just beginning to process all that I saw and learned in the last ten days touring shelters in the south. Images of the dogs haunt me – their eyes full of sadness and confusion, their bodies tense and leaping with stress or shut down and still.
They scroll through my mind when I wake in the night and when I sit down at the computer now to write this. There is much to feel hopeless about in the world of southern shelters and rural dog rescue.
But there is also much to be hopeful about. There were two shelters we visited that made it clear that while there is still so far to go, Continue reading “It Can Be Done (but it may require SuperWoman)”
Another Good Dog™ 