Our adventures as a foster dog family
I’m pretty sure Mia will be here indefinitely.
It may take some time for her people to find her. She’s incredibly special and so her people are likely special too. She’s ceaseless entertainment for Fanny (and for us), so we don’t mind waiting.
Continue reading “Coming Soon to a Foster Home Near You: Puppies!”
The puppies are doing well. Growing plump and busy.
It is odd to be raising them in such isolation. Normally, by now, we would be having lots of visitors to help with socialization and even a few potential adopters would be stopping by to meet them. Until they get the all-clear from the vet next week, the rescue has not offered them to the people on the Puppy Waiting List (approved adopters who have been through the application process and are just waiting for the right puppy) or put them on the website. I expect them to be cleared on Monday, but I qualify my assumptions these days.
Below are the diary entries from this week. Continue reading “Diary of a Rescue Week Four: A Week of Growing Puppies”
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!”
So…..puppies! Now that Houdini is safely launched and Flannery is thriving in her new home, we can talk about puppies!
Everyone keeps asking me what breed they are and the only answer I have is 100% mutt. If you can think of a breed, I can probably find some evidence for it amongst these ten puppies. They are all so different!
Some have short hair, some long hair, and some fuzzy hair. They arrived in a rainbow of colors – black, chocolate, brown, mocha, tan, white, and gray. Some of the puppies have a thick density to them and others are light-boned. The two black puppies might look similar in photos, but one is fuzzy and stocky, and the other is short-haired and leggy. I keep color collars on them, but it’s easy to distinguish one from the other. There is something for everyone in this crowd.
Nancy was here for a photo shoot over the weekend and Continue reading “One Hundred Percent Chance of Mutt”
Almost all of the PA Pups are fat little butterballs.
It’s been a challenge to get to know them as Continue reading “Mostly Fat and Happy in PA”
The natural instincts of animals are remarkable. Spending so many of my hours with animals in the course of a lifetime, I’ve come to respect this, but I’ve also come to wonder at length about human instinct and whether we are compelled to follow it the way animals do, but that is decidedly a topic for another post.
A week ago today, I had just finished a post about Thelma’s arrival and the happenings in this foster house, when Continue reading “A Mama’s Instinct”
Let me just say that four puppies is much less than twelve. And a 30 pound dog is much easier than a 60 pound dog. Sure, those are generalizations, but I do feel a bit like a marathoner who is running a 5K.
Estelle is a rockstar mom. The puppies are fat and shiny and eleven days old, but Estelle already seems restless. I think in human terms she’s one of those moms who has a hundred Pinterest boards and writes three blogs, while making all homemade baby food and teaching step aerobics.
She hops in the box, does a quick clean up and lays down to let the pups nurse. And then she hops right back out of the box and takes a tour of the tiny room she’s trapped in, checking under the grow light table and in the buckets under the mudsink. When I toss toys in for her to play with, she inspects them and then carries them into the box and nestles them beside her pups. Then she stands guard by the gate, growling at strangers (which include my children) and barking at her reflection in the front door glass pane or the cats moving around on the porch. Each time Gracie barks Continue reading “Estelle is a Rock Star Mom”
Another Good Dog™ 