Welcome to my journey! This blog is about my adventures in dog training, pet therapy work, rescue work and life with my menagerie of animals. Enjoy!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

New Foster Dog



Summer has arrived early, well, not really, our new Foster dogs' name is Summer! She is about 16months old and has already weaned at least one litter of pups that we know of. They too were in the rescue program. She came to me as a temporary foster, she already had a pending adoption and one more in the wings. Unfortunately both fell through within days of each other. So we figured we'd be in it for the long run, which was fine with me as she is soooo easy and really could use some stability and time to get healthy. She is on the extremely thin side at 67 lbs and her coat was a mess! Mats everywhere, dry and brittle and dirty.

My first observation of her was she's no typical house pet that got lost or dumped. She was most likely an outside dog or a farm dog that got lost or dumped. She seemed very restless in the house for the first day or two and would sleep contentedly outside all day long if I let her, which frankly I pretty much did as it was beautiful weather and it made her more at ease. She had beautiful body language with Beanie and play was instantaneous and perfectly appropriate (minus the occasional mounting from Beanie who couldn't resist her flirtatious postures!)

I finally gave her a bath tuesday night and you would have thought I insulted every member of her family the way she reacted. It was as if she'd never been washed her whole life, and likely she hadn't! She was patient and tolerated it; the dryer was another matter altogether. She literally tried climbing onto the counter to get away from it! This morning she must have decided she was clean long enough and promptly rolled in the dewey grass then laid in the dirt ditch she has excavated for herself under the kids swingset!

I got good news today though, she now has a third adoption on her and will in all likelihood be moving on next wednesday. I am hoping I can put some good weight on her by then. She's eating 3 meals a day of the same food Beanie eats so she's definitely getting good nutrition.

It's weird, one of my friends mentioned that she sounded like a keeper, and honestly she is really easy, sweet, calm and gets along so well with everyone; she should be a keeper. But I don't want her. She's pretty and I love on her and I'll be sad to see her go but I guess I just haven't found that spark with another dog yet. And you know what, I'm not sure I will. Beanie may be it for me, I may not have room in my heart for 2 dogs. Who knows, in my life I have learned to never say never and that when something is right you just know it! That's how I married my husband and it's worked for me so far! =)