Tag: Updates

dog rescue, Dogs with Issues, Flannery Oconnor, former foster dogs, foster dogs, fostering, Gala, hard to adopt, Long Term Dog

Sometimes it Don’t Come Easy…

Cara Sue Achterberg

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.

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photo by Nancy Slattery

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…” →

dog books, dog rescue, foster dogs, fosterdogs, fostering, Oreo, Rescue Road Trip, Updates, writing

Our Special Visitor

Cara Sue Achterberg

We have a very special guest with us this week. (As if four dogs wasn’t enough!)

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Oreo and I go way back to the day I met him in a shelter in North Carolina, where he’d been living on and off for over a year. He’d been adopted out twice, but neither adopter chose to neuter him or bring him inside, so he ran off (as unneutered male dogs are want to do) and Animal Control returned him to the shelter each time.

There was something special about Oreo—the way he looked at us, the way he leaned into his kennel fence desperate for your touch, and how he’d hold your hand through the fence.

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It was a long and winding road from that day Continue reading “Our Special Visitor” →

dog rescue, foster dogs, fostering, Gala, oph, returned dogs, Schuyler puppies

Fosterless

Cara Sue Achterberg

This is the longest we’ve gone without a foster dog since we started fostering with OPH just over three years ago.

It’s weird.

It’s made me aware of two things – 1) I spend a lot of time fostering and 2) I don’t like being without a foster dog.

I’m amazed at how much time this has freed up. I’ve had time to work with Frankie (and even a little with Gracie) on his homework for doggie school two or three times a day. We also take a two-mile walk each morning and sometimes again in the afternoon. I’ve stayed on track with my latest manuscript and even had time to cook dinner nearly every night. I even had lunch with a friend and on one balmy day recently, I took my convertible out for a drive with no destination in mind.

Of course, just because I don’t have a foster dog in residence, doesn’t mean Continue reading “Fosterless” →