6 posts tagged “foster dogs”
We picked Betty up yesterday evening. :D She's still really sweet. Our dogs don't mind her at all. During meeting time in the backyard she got low and submitted right away when Beacon and Haven came up to her. Since then all three dogs will hang out in the same room and sniff the perimeter of the fence together.
Betty was quiet in the crate overnight. She loves being on soft things like Haven, but she doesn't try to get on the furniture. She also loves getting attention. She'll follow us around looking for pets and itches.
So far she's an easy dog to foster and just goes with the flow. She likes wandering around the edge of the fence looking for all of the noises she hears. There are usually quite a few birds flitting here and there. I'm still waiting to see her point.
Andrew said I couldn't leave Beacon out. So I quickly put together a video of Beacon and the dogs we've fostered. You'll see that his playing methods are usually I'm the boss dog style. But eventually he'll let most of the dogs we've fostered hang out next to him.
And when I have more time (or perhaps patience) I'll make one of these things with more *coolness* than transitions between photos. Maybe I'll even combine stills with live action video. Oooooh. Aaaaaaah.
I spent some time this morning looking at old foster dog photos. I decided to make a video of Haven and the foster dogs that we've had to date. I found that there were some foster dogs that didn't pose with Haven while they were with us. Most of the foster dogs love Haven, some more than others. They like playing with her because she's not as mean as Beacon. ;)
Knowing that we won't have any additional foster dogs this year I can write a summary for this year! We fostered a total of 24 dogs this year, making our grand total of dogs fostered 36 since April 2005!!
Our shortest foster was just a few hours. We had a few dogs that had very short stays. We also had a few dogs that were here just overnight because they were adopted so quickly. Our longest foster was Zoe. We had her for six weeks the beginning of the year.
Zoe was probably one of the more memorable fosters but not only because of her length of time with us. She was a special needs dog. She had some neurological issue that made her incontinent. We discovered this shortly after having her in our home. After trips to a few vets and specialists there wasn't anything that could be done for her but because she wasn't in any pain she was kept in Vicky's program.
I learned how to express Zoe's bladder and did this several times throughout the day. She had a spunky terrier attitude. She got along well with our dogs. And she was as cute as can be. She eventually was adopted and is probably being spoiled.
We had quite a few mom dogs that started off at Vicky's pregnant. After they raised their pups they were able to move into an actual foster home. And we also had quite a few dogs that were at the shelter for a long time without getting adopted. Most of them loved the change of scenery and attention. Their "bad habits" didn't last long and weren't an issue.
Even Maverick was adopted. He actually went to his new home Thanksgiving weekend. So far Vicky hasn't gotten any calls saying that he's not working out so that's a good sign. ;) He went to a home with another dog (who also has a lot of energy when playing) and a big fenced in yard.
Last year we made a calendar for Vicky of the dogs we fostered for her throughout the year. We only had 11 dogs so the 12th picture was of the kennel building at her house. This year we're going to make a few collages out of the dogs we had for a short time and give those dogs we had for an extended period of time their own month.
Last week we took pictures of a litter of puppies who will be ready to go to forever homes early next week. We'll be taking this litter to an adoption event tomorrow morning, where Andrew and I will be helping out.
Helen is a special needs puppy in this litter. She was born deaf. So she'll have to go to a home with a fenced in yard. Whoever adopts her will also have to be willing to train using hand signals and get used to not being able to use verbal commands for training and even discipline.
All of the puppies in this litter look different. Their mom is a doxie/hound mix. From the looks of the coloring on some of the other pups an aussie seems to be mixed in since there's some merle, although doxies can also have that coloring.
And speaking of doxies, yesterday we took a picture of Rocky. He's a three year old long haired doxie mix. We're wondering if he's not mixed with a Golden Retriever since he looks like he has that kind of head on his body. His snout isn't thin and pointy like a doxie. He's cute though either way.
I was also messing around with One True Media this morning creating a photo montage of softball pictures. In order to see how things worked since I've never put something like this together I threw together foster dog pictures.
Since I'm impatient in waiting to be able to upload the YouTube video you can view all 30 of the dogs we've fostered by clicking this link.