Cam, day three

Today hasn't been easy. To our surprise, Cam was not neutered when we got him and the first two days he peed in several areas of our house, despite our attempts to keep a close eye on him. Two curtains, our bed, a pillow, my husband's work bag and our dog, Estes.

Poor Estes, this isn't the first time she's been peed on.

Today I took him in to be neutered and he handled it like a champ. The hard part will be keeping him calm for two weeks so he can heal--he's basically a puppy in a big, gangly 65 lb body.

Honestly, we weren't prepared for this experience. We were under the impression that he'd be neutered when we got him. Besides that, our house is brand new, and we are considering selling it--so the peeing really is an issue. But hopefully he won't feel the urge to mark his "territory" now that he's had the surgery. Fingers crossed!

I wish I could say fostering is always easy. It isn't. Our girls are thrown off by the change in their routines. We're thrown off by it too and doing our best to provide a loving, stable home to all. The first few nights are always rough as everyone tries to figure out sleeping arrangements and the foster learns what is appropriate.

But he continues to be a loving boy, and despite each one of us in this house being utterly exhausted at the moment, we're forging on.

Cam(pbell)

A big, sweet yellow boy with beautiful eyes and a glorious smile arrived today from Nebraska. We met the transport at the Children's Hospital parking lot and brought him home. After a meeting with our Westies on neutral turf (the park by our house) we all went inside to get settled.

First order of business is always a bath. Some dogs are dirtier than others, depending upon where they've come from, but all get a bath right away.

The girls waiting anxiously at the door during Cam's bath.

After that, there was food, water, and the receiving of some fun toys.

Nothing beats a delicious bone.

And then there was a lot of chasing around our back yard...

...followed by some nice time spent simply relaxing.

In the cool grass chewing a super fun toy.

A busy day in a new place but he's handling it like a champ.

Cruelty Free Friday

Since learning that beagles are used in laboratory testing, I have made a commitment to reading labels thoroughly and only buying products that are cruelty free. 

Beagles are the most popular breed for lab use because of their friendly, docile, trusting, forgiving, people-pleasing personalities. The research industry says they adapt well to living in a cage, and are inexpensive to feed. Research beagles are usually obtained directly from commercial breeders who specifically breed dogs to sell to scientific institutions.

I hope you'll join me in taking action as a consumer. Let's show these companies that we don't agree with their methods, and we will not support them.

Coming soon...

He comes on Sunday. The wait always makes me feel both giddy and anxious.

I don't know much about him except that he's young--probably around 1 or 2 years. He was found abandoned in a house in Nebraska, along with one to two other males and a female with ten puppies.

I don't know what the rest of the story is--how they came to be abandoned. That's the thing: sometimes you get the whole back story, sometimes it's just bits and pieces.

I love dogs, so getting to be around more dogs makes me happy, but there is always that unknown of a new dog, too. Will he and my dogs get along ok? Will he be nervous or relaxed, chew my furniture and shoes or not be interested, be house broken...or not? Will he be comfortable going into a crate if need be?

I don't even know if he has a name.

But we'll know in a few days...

What it's like

Fostering dogs always makes me think about that story about the old man and the kid on the beach. The tide has washed up all of those starfish--remember? And the kid is walking along the beach, and he picks one up and throws it back into the ocean. And he picks another one up and throws it back into the ocean. And so on.

And the old man, he's watching this kid and he shakes his head, you know, because he knows a thing or two, he wanted to save the world when he was a kid and then he saw just how big the world was. He was probably once an idealist, too (you know what they say cynics are? Idealists with broken hearts.). But now he has arthritis and the tide is smelly and he doesn't mean to be, but he's a little cranky because the starfish are all over this beach and the kid is just picking 'em up and throwing them back at the Atlantic like this is Skee Ball, and he hollers at the kid, "Hey! You're wasting your time. There's too many--you can't save them all!"

And the kid is undaunted. He's not even listening. And the old guy is even more riled up by that and he shouts out, "There are thousands of starfish on this beach. And there are hundreds of beaches on the coast. You can't possibly make a difference!"

And the kid, he picks up a starfish and he looks at the old man and then he turns and he throws that sea creature back into the waves, and he hollers back, "It made a difference to this one!"

And that's what fostering dogs is like.

Hamlet, our first foster.

Fetching

My dictionary widget defines it this way: To go for and bring back (someone or something.)
I find that to be beautifully appropriate.

For almost 15 years my heart was so broken over a dog that I had shut down completely to them.

They were a nuisance. They were co-dependent. They were needy. They shed. They drooled. They jumped. My friends with dogs always had to leave early to walk their dogs. Or they always wanted to bring them along on hikes. People talked about how human-like they were and to that I said, "You've lost your mind."

All of my affection and sentiment for the species was gone, baby, gone and my hardened heart proved to work like gangbusters at keeping it that way.

But then one day it didn't.