By Kiley Garrett
Anyone who knows me or even interacts with me on a semi-regular basis would be able to tell you: I can be a little annoying with my animal rescue recruitment methods. This is true because it includes me mentioning dogs and fostering in at least every conversation I have and I have decided, to add to my animal-lover reputation, I would make my first article this semester about my experience I have had with this crazy dog adventure, some things I have learned and tips I have for anyone who is thinking about getting involved. I hope you enjoy!
This is Charlie, the girl who started it all. My fiancé and I had just gotten our first apartment together in May of 2018 and we had been toying with the idea of getting a cat for a while but could not commit to any of the opportunities we were given to bring one into our family. I had just gotten the deposit from my dorm back and somehow, we wound up at the Portales animal shelter for what we had both thought was a window shopping trip.
When we got there, we walked around a bit, said hi to all the dogs and cats and decided to pull some out to play and walk around. We pulled out Bertha, a blue-nose pit that was a little energetic and a lot scared. Then we pulled Daisy, an owner surrender from someone who was moving and decided they did not want her anymore.
We were walking into the back when my fiancé stopped at the very last kennel; he pointed out that out of all the dogs, this one was the only one that was not trying to get our attention. He called her, and she just looked up at us with the biggest, saddest eyes and it was like you could tell she was out of hope. We pulled her, played with her for a minute and she was so happy to have anyone pay attention to her.
I looked at my fiancé and told him that we had to have her. He asked me if I was sure and the woman working at the shelter told us that we had to decide soon because she only had about 20 minutes before being euthanized. Before she had been in and out of the shelter, she was used for breeding and we have learned that she likely had a litter of puppies twice a year since she was first capable. It was then that I knew we could not leave her behind.
She’s our first, our ginger Staffordshire Terrier, who loves babies, puppies and pretty much anything small.
This is Macie. When it came time for school to start in August of 2018, we decided we should get another dog to keep Charlie company while we were at class during the day. We knew we could not afford to adopt a dog, but we had heard about fostering and decided we would give that a try. We looked at a couple of dogs and were settling between a small rat looking one or Macie, the smallest German Shepherd I’ve ever seen. My Fiancé was all for the small one, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that we had to save Macie. Fast forward a month and I figured out why. We realized she was pregnant and a week later on September 21st, 2018 from 1:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. she gave birth to 6 healthy puppies: Hope, Sam, Lacey, Gunner, Bean and Ella. Four weeks later we decided to make Macie a part of our home forever and when the puppies were eight weeks, they went up to Colorado (with the help of Colorado Puppy Rescue) and found their forever homes.
This is King. My baby, 100 percent. We had to take a fostering break and returned suddenly and unexpectedly when we saw this good boy’s mugshot. We accepted him into our home, and were seriously considering keeping him, but knew he would find a better home in Maine. He went up there with 11 other dogs on July 7th, 2019 and he was just adopted the first week of September.
This is Shae. She left September 7th, 2019 and went up to Utah to find her forever home. She fell in with our little tribe so well, we miss her so much and wish her the happiest forever she could ever want.
In this past year of foster experience, I’ve learned a lot. And to pass on some of that knowledge to you, here are some things to know about fostering:
- There’s no cost for you.
I foster through Labor of Love Project and like many other rescues, they provide everything for the animal you are fostering. All of their food plus a kennel and their vetting is covered by the rescue through donations. All you need to do is open your home and hearts - Training is a must.
Okay, so maybe it isn’t a must, but I would definitely recommend it. A lot of the dogs you will foster will probably have some sort of training, but some of them may not. The ones that do may have been trained using fear-based methods, which will take some time to work with. It can be frustrating, but it’s not their fault in the slightest and patience is definitely required. The best method is positive enforcement training, which is how we house train, kennel train, and obedience train our fosters. Some basic commands that I try to get all the dogs to learn: their name, Sit, Down, Wait, Come and No. Some of the dogs take to commands quickly and those dogs are the ones that get extra training. King ran drills alongside Macie, who is my Service Dog in Training and he kept up well considering he came to us with absolutely no training. - They’ll have weird fears and that’s okay.
Charlie is deathly afraid of flyswatters and socks, Macie hates cardboard and King had an extreme aversion to any sort of intimate contact, from kissing to cuddling; he wouldn’t stand it. Even unneutered, he would not even try to mount Charlie or Macie and if my fiancé and I were cuddling or even laying too close to each other in bed, he would plant himself between us and stare my fiancé down with the occasional growl. Shae was only three months old when we pulled her from death row and she was terrified of everything until she was not. To date, she has eaten so many lizards that I’m convinced she has a deep seeded hatred for them
I love fostering and even though it is a bit tough to let them go, it is nice knowing that I helped them on their way to their forever homes. My fostering journey is no where near being over and maybe by reading this you are intrigued by the opportunity to be a foster just like I was.
