Foster 11: Dora

Way behind... here's some catch up (ketchup? cat sup?).


Dora was one of three in a litter that we took in, as well as her mother. She was the spunkiest of the bunch. This was our first cat fostering adventure, and we kept them in a side room that is really a remodeled garage. It helped keep the dogs out of 3 of the 4 litter boxes.

Dora, meanwhile, was a huge fan of sneaking into the house, darting between legs and running as fast as possible to various hiding spaces in the bedroom and office.

She was going to be named Kung Pow after my Uncle Scott's cat (we originally had her whole litter named with this theme). But, given her wanderlust (and Amanda's distaste for naming cats after Chinese food), she earned a name following the popular Spanish-speaking explorer.

Dora looks exactly like her mother. She's the only one in the litter to look even slightly similar, but I suspect, when grown, you won't be able to tell the difference between them.

Dora is a happy story! She was adopted after a stay with us and a couple weeks at the shelter.

Foster 10: Mikey

Here's our tenth! Don't have time to type now, but here's what we suggested for his profile page:

Meet Mikey! He may be the most affectionate dog in the world! He wants nothing more than to snuggle and to be as close to you as possible.

Mikey is very smart and picks up commands quickly. In fact, he already knows “sit” and “down.” He is also crate trained and is almost fully housebroken.

At his foster home, Mikey plays very well with other dogs – even big ones! He’s very tolerant and gets along great with cats too!

Mikey can be easily frightened and worries if you move toward him too quickly or make loud noises. Because of this, he may do best in a home without small children. He is naturally very trusting but needs a loving hand to help him gain confidence and learn to feel safe.

All he really wants is someone who will love him just as much as he loves them.

Mikey weighs approximately 30 lbs. and is done growing. He has been neutered and is patiently waiting for his forever family.

(Edit: Mikey was adopted by a great family, including his new best friend - a young lady of about 14 years)

Toby makes a discovery

Why, yes, I do fit through the cat door!

Foster 8: Toby (aka Snoop)

Our 8th foster's prison name is "Snoop" but he seems to be a Toby to us. Here's his writeup:

My name is Toby, and I am a one year old Vizsla/Beagle mix.

I get along great with the other dogs in my foster home. We run and play around the house for hours. Sometimes I even forget that they are three times my size—I only weigh about 20 pounds.

Something else I love to do is snuggle! Every night I climb on to my foster mom’s lap to sleep while she watches television. Sometimes she even picks me up and carries me around. I think this is great!

There is one other thing I love to do, but my foster parents don’t like it so much. I don’t know what the big deal is—that furry white hairball meows at me all the time. He is just begging for me to chase him around the house.


Okay, so there might be one other thing I do that my foster parents don’t love. I howl when I am lonely. I am part beagle though—what do they expect from me? In my humble opinion, I am the perfect dog and these minor “issues” just add to my overall charm.


Toby is neutered, housebroken and is ready for his forever home. He has been waiting patiently since March, 2008.

Fetch!

Foster 7: Adelyn

UPDATE: After 2 months at the shelter, nearly being euthanized and 2 months with us, Addy was adopted yesterday (May 17)!


Our current foster dog, Adelyn (or Adrock, as she's known to her posse), is smart. She's scary smart. Like, I'm pretty sure that she has developed complex algorithms to determine when we will give her treats and uses elaborate engineering to determine how best to get into the trash can.

Smart dogs are awesome. You can see them figure things out, like how to sit or stay. They can also be really annoying, like when they figure out how to dismantle a baby gate.


Also, normally, you can wear out a hyper dog by just letting them play with Buddy for 30 minutes. It's loud. They run into the furniture a lot. But when it's over, they'll lay down for the rest of the night panting. Adrock is different. She's like a boxer who anticipates a long fight and conserves her blows. Jaw gaping, she floats like a butterfly and stings like an alligator. At first Buddy thinks he's winning, but after a few rounds the poor guy ends up laying on his back, exhausted, while Addy chews on his leg.

Addy was adopted after a couple weeks in our house, but the poor thing was returned. She actually sulked for two days after she was returned. We've kept her as our foster since, hoping she gets adopted without having to return to the shelter. (Of course, we always hope for that... it's much easier to hand a dog off to a new home than to return it to a small concrete cage.)


Also, ummm... she has an odd number of nipples; nine of them. And they don't line up neatly in rows. Instead they zig-zag across her belly. Is it weird that I find that endearing?

Foster 6

We've named our new foster Laney Boggs, but she's less of a dog and more of a small black bear. She's stout - part Rotteweiler. I like to think the other part is Bernese Mountain Dog. Every morning, when I let her out of her crate, she crawls into my lap... all 60 lbs. of her. She's got a little growing to do yet, I think.





Plus, Gracie Ann (finally) got adopted!

Foster 5.5?

Gracie Ann is back; apparently she's become the boss dog at the shelter, so she needs some time on the outside to get rehabilitated. Here's 30 seconds of her playing King of the Hill on the furniture with Buddy - you'll notice that she's winning.

Charlotte: Foster Five

Charlotte was our fifth foster - a blue tick coon hound stray that had just had a litter of puppies. She was emaciated; might have had worms; and her teats were chapped, full of milk, and obviously hurting her. Plus she smelled really bad. See her ribs in this photo?


While she was recuperating, she enjoyed sitting on the couch...


Sitting on the couch some more...


And wagging her really long tail. In fact, she wags her tail so much that she cut the end of her tail (what can I say, she was tragic), which then sprayed blood all over our walls and furniture at knee-height every time she wagged. I took a picture of this for the blog, but it was kinda morbid so I didn't post it. Sufficient to say, it looked like there was an elfin massacre in our living room.

This is called "happy tail" or "split tail," and is pretty common apparently for breeds like Great Danes. It's really tough to heal. Fortunately, Charlotte let us bandage her tail.


First we cleaned the cut with alcohol. Then we put on a neosporin-type antibiotic cream. Then we added a piece of gauze and wrapped it in athletic tape (the cloth type so that it breathes a little). This was changed daily.

Some dogs chew off their bandages. For them, people have developed crazy methods of tail-hiding, such as this one which requires a trip to the hardware store.

Her tail seemed to be healing but we don't know for sure because Charlotte was adopted; our first dog to get a new home while still in our care! She's got a great new family, a nice fenced back yard and a cat.

Dog eat dog

Caption: A vicious 6-month-old Puggle puppy, known as Tony the Corkscrew, attacks an innocent victim in Columbia, Mo. on Dec. 27, 2007.




Tony is our fourth foster, a pug/beagle mix (aka the "designer breed" puggle). We grabbed him right before Christmas because the shelter was getting overwhelmed.






A man of taste, in addition to eating American Pit Bull Terriers, Tony also likes to sample the occasional blanket.

Heidi update

Columbia Second Chance was able to take in Heidi and get her taken care of. They think it isn't cancer, but a salivary gland infection. Apparently it's healing up quite well and she's now listed on their Web site as adoptable.

Hooray!

Gracie Ann

Hmmm, this is quickly becoming my foster dog log...

Here's Gracie Ann. Our third foster dog, she's been with us the longest because of a series of health problems beginning with kennel cough.

If you look at the full size version of the picture above, you'll also see that her one eye is a little red. It became very eventually. Now she has to wear an Elizabethan Collar, or e-collar (so named because, like Al Bundy, Elizabethan-era Brits were prone to scratching themselves and, thus, needed to wear these crazy collars).

Also, she keeps breaking it, so now it's pieced together with duct tape. It's pretty hilarious looking in a pitiful sort of way.

Like Fruit Rollups, it comes by the foot!

Meet Heidi, foster number 2:



Heidi likes to eat something a little different. It's white and comes in long rolls. She finds it spooled up in the bathroom and just starts nibbling.

A doberman/hound mix, Heidi came to us with a bad case of kennel cough as well as a nasty dog-like flu which the Shelter referred to as "snot nose." She was really sluggish and didn't like to move around too much. It was pitiful.

Now, however, she won't stop moving. She wants to wrestle with anyone 24 hours a day with maybe a short break to eat.

In the time she's been with us, she's also gotten to about 90% housebroken too. Most likely this is building on the work of some other loving foster families, but she has been progressing really quickly. She's really an adorable, happy, little bug-eyed cutie.

She keeps playing despite 3 worrisome growths we've discovered on her neck. The vet is not sure what they are, could be anything from an odd infection to cancer. The shelter is not set up to do a biopsy, which is what she really needs. They're contacting other animal rescues to see if anyone else would be able to help out.

Keep your fingers crossed. With so many dogs needing homes and so few resources to help, it is really hard to point to one dog and say "that one deserves some extra attention." But when she's lived in your home for a week - a crazy, hectic week at that - it's so hard to hear that she may be too sick to place.

Wish her luck!

A home for Pepper Blossom

Pepper has already been adopted! We'll get another foster dog later today - some sort of Doberman mix.

Foster Dog!

This dog needs a permanent home!

A few weeks ago we sent in an application to become dog foster parents for the Central Missouri Humane Society. A short training session later, and our first foster dog arrived yesterday, Pepper Blossom.

CMHS is smart. They start you off with the easy dogs.

Pepper (or Peps, or Peppy, or Pepsid AC, or The Peppinator) is just getting over a case of kennel cough. She is incredibly sweet and likes to stretch out across your lap on the couch or in the bed.

Even more importantly, all of the dogs and Hank have been receptive of Pepper. We were a little worried they wouldn't be happy with intruders, but they've been excellent.

Pepper is active, happy and thoroughly enjoys wrestling with Buddy (which is a godsend for Bailey who, frankly, is getting sick of babysitting the little punk). And she is currently trying to eat a cardboard box...

...ok... I've stopped her.

Congratulations, Pepper! You've rightfully earned a place on Stuff My Dog Ate.

Behold the cardboard box: