On cool days when the sun is shining, most of our dogs like to run. Our play yard is about 30 feet by 85 feet, so it makes a good space in which to run. There are also some obstacles in the way of lumber stacks that provide interest and challenge to the racing.
Blondie – March 2013
For as big and bulky as Blondie appears, she is quite agile and can make some amazing moves where she can dig in and get grip. She often initiates these racing sessions. She also knows that I prefer racing as a form of exercise over wrestling; wrestling often escalates into something beyond play.
On days when the weather is unpleasant, my assistants: Blondie and Cochise, come into the office with me and the foster dogs snooze in their crates. Normally. If one of the fosters is in the “House Training” phase, they are invited to join us in the office. If they snooze on a bed, all is well. If they’re exploring, I have to keep an eye on them to be sure they’re not misbehaving. That slows down the work I’m trying to get done.
Of course, we all go outside every couple of hours for some leg stretching, play time, and … ummm … relief time.
As is noted on our Home page we use Facebook pages to promote our foster dogs. The idea is to build interest in adopting these deserving animals before they leave us.
Until recently the process was that we get them healed and work on any behavioral and training issues, then send them off via Rolling Rescue to a rescue or shelter or foster home in an area where adoption is more likely and they work on finding the dogs permanent homes. We follow along on those web sites and hope our furbabies find homes soon. Sometimes it takes a while.
The first two that we created Facebook pages for were adopted while still in our care, so when we took them to ride The Bus we were not sending them off on an uncertain venture, but directly to their forever home. This made for a much happier end to our involvement in their lives!
Yesterday Joy O’Hare donated a narrow futon pad that she no longer wanted. She thought it might make good dog beds. I agreed, and was happy to haul it back here. I set about cutting away the excess fabric and Velcro on the back the webbing that connected the two pads but allowed them to bend and fold.
The result was two 28” x 35” x 4” thick pads with removable covers. Buster spent all afternoon enjoying the one I put down to try out. Joy was a little worried that the dogs might react to the cat fur she could not vacuum off of them. But that was of no concern to Buster.
When it was time to retire for the night, Buster was adamant that he preferred to sleep in the office on “his” new dog bed rather than in his crate. This was not an option, but it took some time to convince him of that.
This morning after The Fosters had breakfast and some yard time, Buster was again insistent on going inside and to the office. It was still a little chilly out – and Buster has been a bit jealous of the extra privileges Hercules has been getting during his final phase of house breaking – so I decided to allow it instead of insisting he go to a pen outdoors like the others.
Upon entering the office, he was horrified to find that Cochise had already claimed the new dog bed!
Marie and I have been providing canine foster care to dogs since June of 2012. We find it to be a very rewarding experience. Some posts to this blog promote animal fostering, offer training tips and cover canine health issues. I will post the stories about our foster dogs, articles about what we’ve learned as foster care providers, and some links to the organizations we work with.
But it doesn’t stop there. I’ve been busy setting up Facebook pages for each of the foster dogs where I can post short bits of information, pictures and videos about each dog. Why not just do all this on the web site? In a word: traffic.
