Teaching An Old Dog A New Trick

Last month, on a total whim, my daughter and I decided to foster puppies from the humane society.  My reasoning was this:

1. The crawler on the tv screen during the morning news said the humane society had a great need for fosters for cats and dogs.

2. Our three cats would not tolerate it very well if we brought in foster kittens, besides the fact that the fosters might bring a kitty illness in that ours could catch, even if we kept them in separate parts of the house.

3. It would be really hard to give up kittens that we had fostered, because we are cat people, but puppies? We could give up puppies. They're cute, but we don't want a dog, so we wouldn't have a problem when it was time to return puppies for adoption.

We got our puppies, two of them, shepherd/great pyrenees mixes from a litter of six, on August 2. We named them Audrey and Olivia, because we thought the names they got from the humane society were stupid.

You could have put the sum total of knowledge we had about taking care of a puppy (let alone TWO of them) on the head of a pin and still had room to etch War and Peace on the pinhead.

We tried our best to housebreak them. We gave them a reward every time they pottied outside. They rewarded us by pooping and peeing all over our family room floor.

They got sick. REALLY sick. They both had coccidiosis (a single-cell parasite that attacked their intestinal tract). They both had kennel cough. Olivia was sick enough that I thought she wouldn't make it. Twice.

They chewed any and everything.

They occasionally had accidents in their crate, requiring baths and cleaning of the crate first thing in the morning. In the early days of the coccidiosis, one of them pooped in the crate in the night. Squishy poop. They got it on themselves, of course. Then, taking it to another level, Audrey apparently dipped her tail in it and painted poop all over the inside of the crate. 

And I asked for this.

But after four weeks of puppies, four weeks of alternating between enjoying them and wishing they were GONE, of cleaning up poop and pee off the floor, walking them at all hours, napping with them in our laps, playing with them, cursing them for chewing our flip flops, and worrying about their health, we fell in love.

Then it was time to return them to the humane society for transport to the rescue group that was going to find homes for them. A rescue group 500 miles away, where we would never see them again.

The manager of the humane society told us the name of the group where they were going, as we stood there crying, turning our babies over to them. She told us she cries every time she sends her own fosters off for adoption.

My daughter and I said one last goodbye to the puppies, gave them one last hug and kiss, then walked out the door and stood on the sidewalk in front, hugging each other and sobbing. On the drive home, we talked about how we could never do this again. It was too much mess. Too much heartbreak. Too much everything.

But the next day, I contacted the rescue group and asked if we could be kept informed about how the puppies were doing. I joined their Facebook page. And yesterday, their pictures turned up on the Facebook page, along with those of their siblings.

And now I get it. I get what fostering is all about. 

Look at these six puppies. Four of them stayed in a kennel at the humane society, because there weren't enough foster families to take them in. Ours were loved and nurtured and maybe spoiled a little. Can you tell which were our puppies and which lived at the shelter?

#1 is Audrey, #6 is Olivia. Look how perky they are, how bright their eyes! 

We did a good thing. It wasn't always easy, but we did it. 

Will we foster again? Yes. (Shhhh! Don't tell my husband or the three cats.)

Are we sorry we didn't keep them? Nope. We are not dog people. Not entirely sure we are PUPPY people, but we are foster people.

Are we going to cry again next time? You betcha.

Help an overcrowded shelter in your area and be a foster parent to a dog or cat (or puppy or kitten or two or seven). 

Want to read the rest of our adventures in fostering? Read Puppy Tails, Part 1, Puppy Tails, Part 2, and Puppy Tails, The Final Chapter.

This post is an entry for this week's Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop with the prompt:

Talk about one thing you learned last month.

Twice the Thankful in One Weekend

Yes, I'm doing a second Ten Things of Thankful this weekend! Mark it on your calendar; it's only happened once before (but I can't let Zoe be the only one to do it every week). 

1. Even though school hasn't started yet, fall sports have! Volleyball started this week. Our first game was supposed to be a home game in the new high school, but since construction wasn't completed, we had to play at one of the middle schools. This was rather disappointing for the girls, but there was a big turnout nonetheless. Freshmen, JV and Varsity teams all lost to Carl Junction, a formidable opponent, but the JV team lost the least, if that makes any sense at all (it does to me).

2. Open House was scheduled for Thursday evening, but we had an away volleyball game that night. Since the girls wouldn't be able to attend, arrangements were made for the girls to get a tour of the new school on Wednesday afternoon, given by one of the coaches and one of the principals (who also happens to be the dad of two of the players - helps to know people).

This place is AMAZING. New practice
field being completed behind the girls.

This is why we didn't get to have our
first home game at home.

3. Preschool Open House was also this week. I got to meet my primary class kids on Tuesday morning, and my pre-k class kids on Wednesday morning. We're going to have a fun year!

4. You know that phrase "Politics makes strange bedfellows"? Having puppies in the house has done just that for Pete and Fletcher. Not usually so chummy, I caught them spooning in my (unmade) bed.

5. Thursday night, the volleyball team traveled to Neosho with wins for both JV (it was a whoopin') and Varsity.

6. Not only are there two referees in volleyball (one up on a ladder, one on the floor), but there are two line judges, who stand at opposite corners of the court and, well, watch the lines. Usually, they are parent volunteers (I HATE doing it, as I have a tendency to let my mind wander and miss calls. In? Out? Ummmmm.... Plus, people yell at you if they don't think you made the right call. I'm entirely too thin-skinned for that). The line judges hold a red flag (up for out, down for in), and I got completely distracted by one of the judges at Thursday's game, thanks to the way he held his flag while waiting to make a call. I'm thankful I can crack myself up so easily.

I guess they were out of red flags and had
to give him a big pair of red underpants instead.

7. We picked up the College Boy at school on Friday afternoon and took him with us to the lake for the weekend. We hadn't seen him for two and a half weeks, and that is just too long.

8. When we arrived at the lake house, there had been some rain in the area. When the sun broke through, there was a magnificent rainbow. My phone camera could not do it justice. We could see the entire thing, from one end to the other. What a beautiful piece of God's work!

9. How awesome is it that we can keep in touch with old friends via the internet? I enjoyed talking to a couple of very old, very dear friends this weekend, and it was just what I needed.

10. I've thought about my foster puppies all weekend, but I haven't cried. I think that's moving forward.

It's not too late to join our hop! Seriously, I managed to write TWO thankful posts this week; surely, you can write ONE?!

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Puppy Tails: The Final Chapter

My foster puppies have gone, off to the rescue group to find their forever homes. And I miss their little furry faces so much! NOT ENOUGH TO HAVE KEPT THEM, but enough to have me in tears, going from nearly 24/7 with them to seeing them off, never knowing where they're going or how they are faring. 

To try to keep myself from crying myself into a monstrous headache, my Ten Things of Thankful is going to list ten reasons I am thankful they are gone.

1. No more getting up first thing in the morning to take them outside to potty. This was their favorite time of the day to go out, and I had to stand there for-FREAKING-ever when I needed to be inside, getting ready, while they rolled around and played and fought over sticks.

2. No more scratches on my arms or nipped fingers while trying to snap on the leashes, especially in the morning when they needed to GO.

3. Puppy stank. You can bathe them, but they will always smell like puppies. CLEAN puppies, but puppies, nonetheless.

4. It took much finesse to keep them from plowing through old piles of poo in the yard (the girl who SWORE she'd clean up after them outside did it once, the second day we had them, and never again, leaving it entirely up to me). 

5. We'll no longer be taking walks around the block and avoiding the house down the street with the ginormous acorns on the sidewalk that the puppies couldn't resist picking up and crunching, meaning we either had to hold their heads up with the leashes or pick them up and carry them past the acorn mine field.

6. No more puppy pee and poo on the floor! We could come inside from doing both, and one or the other, or BOTH, puppies would squat and unload on the floor. No warning. We've gone through a dozen rolls of paper towels and gallons of floor cleaner.

7. No more sick puppies! The poor things had more than their fair share of puppy squirts, plus kennel cough, and there was a time when I thought we were going to lose Olivia - twice. I don't want to brag, but I am REALLY good at curing puppy squirts, in case you ever need to know. The secret is to feed them canned pumpkin. I don't know why it works, but it does, and they love to eat it. 

8. I can take my flip flops off and not have a puppy immediately carry them off and chew them. Both puppers just love a good flip flop; they're easy to carry, easy to chew.

9. Speaking of chewing, no more gnawing on my coffee table legs, fireplace hearth, toes, shoelaces, or any other of a number of items that do not improve with the addition of tooth marks.

10. No more incessant barking when they are inside their crate and want out! They were tireless barkers, especially Olivia.

See? So many reasons to be thankful they are gone. No more puppies running through the house, chasing each other, rolling and playing, fighting over the same toy or stick. No more puppy faces looking up at me expectantly, waiting for a treat for going potty outside. No more "puppy speak," where they talked to each other. No more warm puppy curled up in my lap asleep while I write. No more wagging tails and cheerful yips to tell me hello when I return to the room. No more watching them play tug of war with the Bone of Contention. 

If I'm so glad to see them go, why is there a lump in my throat and tears stinging my eyes?

Goodbye and good luck, my little pupper girls! I hope we gave you a good foundation to be loving pets for two new families. I know you'll miss each other when you are adopted, but you'll be okay. You're tough, both of you, having started life as puppies that some asshole dumped, living at the humane society, so timid that you and your siblings, all six of you, hid under your bed much of the time. Ahhh, my sweet pups, I'm going to miss you so....

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Back To School For The College Boy and More Thankfuls

I'm watching puppies frolic as I write my Ten Things of Thankful this week. I'm learning a lot about puppies, I can tell you! For one thing, I didn't know they would hide and ambush one another like kitties do. While they are so entertained, I am going to dash off my list before one of them slips away and does something unmentionable (i.e., poops or pees - oops! mentioned it!) on the floor.

1. The puppies are healthy! Or mostly so. It's been a rough week, with Olivia being quite ill with a combination of coccidiosis and kennel cough, but she is on the mend and full of piss and vinegar (unfortunately, quite literally so). Audrey is still coughing, but she doesn't seem to feel bad. 

Audrey with the "bone of contention"

Olivia

2. These puppers are very good about taking their medicine! The first two antibiotics they had were so tasty, Olivia came back for seconds and very nearly got them, until I realized I had just dosed her. Silly puppy! Even the new stuff, which I was told (and took their word for it) didn't taste good, has been taken by the puppies without complaint.

3. My husband went to the doctor this week for a check up for the first time since I've known him (men!). He got scared into going by a freakishly high blood pressure reading at the dentist's office (new procedure they now do) and made the appointment. Now, my husband is not a poster child for healthy living. He has gained a little a lot a few extra pounds since we met. Quite a few, as a matter of fact, and was expecting the worst when he got his bloodwork back. The doctor's office called him this morning to tell him his bloodwork came back completely normal. Cholesterol. Blood sugar. Everything. I told him he was one lucky son of a gun, but by all appearances, I should have him around for a long time yet to come. Unless I hold a pillow over his face and smother him in his sleep for snoring, that is, but that's another story. He's now taking blood pressure medication and was assured that if he lost weight, exercised, and brought down his blood pressure, he would be taken off of the medicine.

4. My husband has been pretty good about helping with the puppies, even though he thinks it was a stupid idea to begin with. A recent conversation between us led him to say the following:

"You're good at puzzles, which would imply that you are logical. But there are two puppies in the family room that would prove otherwise." I'm thankful he puts up with my sometimes ill-thought-out ideas.

My husband's explanation for this:
"the puppies can't read"

5. I took my College Boy back to school this week. He was extremely organized about it, especially for him. He had lists that he checked off, and we got there without only one thing that was slightly important: wastebaskets and cleaning supplies, which had been stored in the basement for the summer. He can easily live without either for quite some time, since the cleaning supplies were relatively untouched after a year of school as it is. I did NOT cry when I left him. Last year, I most assuredly DID, but THIS year, he is a more confident, mature man/boy and much more prepared to take on a year of college than he was last year. Go get 'em, buddy!

On our waaaaay!

See those books in his right hand?
They cost eight HUNDRED dollars...

College Boy - Sophomore Year

6. The College Boy took ME out to lunch after we had moved everything into his dorm!

7. Diet Coke is on sale this week. $3.00 for a 12 pack.

8. You know the new Coke campaign that has "Share a Diet Coke with" on the cans? Then it will say mom or dad or bff or buddy or something like that. You can even buy individual ones with a name on them (mine is never there, by the way). Every time my son would pull one out of the refrigerator that said "Share a Coke with Mom," he would get a different one and leave those ones for me. I came home from dropping him off at college to find a can of "Share a Diet Coke with Mom" right inside the fridge, waiting for me.

9. My daughter got her schedule for sophomore year, and it seems nothing will have to be changed. Whaaa??? First time for everything!

10. Tonight is football jamboree. Know what that means? Fall is just around the corner! Yay, fall!

Silly tree. It's still August!

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Puppy Tails, Part II

We got Audrey and Olivia, our foster puppies, a week ago Saturday. Other than some puppy squirts, to put it delicately, all was well. They were playful. They were cuddly. Then they weren't.

Sunday evening, Olivia began acting droopy. She quit being playful. She didn't eat. She remained the same Monday. I called the humane society and left a message about her condition. She remained kind of listless all day, barely eating, barely drinking, continuing to suffer from her puppy squirts, which had turned particularly vile. I sat outside with her at 11 p.m. that night, snuggling her on my lap, crying, afraid this was something that she couldn't get over.

When I hadn't heard back from the humane society by Tuesday morning, I called the emergency number and talked to (I found out later) the manager of the facility. She asked me to bring in a fecal sample (that was a barrel of monkeys). She called me back within an hour and said nothing showed up, but I was to come by for an antibiotic for both puppies, which I did. In the meantime, I tried to entice Olivia to eat with plain yogurt with active cultures, baby food chicken, then canned chicken. She ate all of it, but was still a little droopy, regardless of some improvement in the poop department. Thursday, they called to say the other puppies in the litter tested positive for coccidiosis, so back to the humane society for a second antibiotic to take, in addition to the one they already had. 

Sick puppy in background. Ornery puppy in foreground.

The good news? Olivia's puppy squirts stopped. The bad news? Olivia stopped pooping altogether. I gave her chicken. I gave her milk. Nothing happened. But something's got to give eventually, and eventually it did, bless her heart, and we were finally on the road to recovery. 

Except for the cough.

Audrey started coughing on Wednesday evening. As she has a propensity for picking up sticks and rocks and eating them, I thought maybe she had something caught in her throat. Then we started looking up kennel cough, my son, daughter and I, and became more and more convinced that that is what she had. The more we researched it, the more frightening the diagnosis sounded, until the three of us were all crying with worry.

Naptime for Audrey.

Friday, Olivia started coughing. Audrey acted fine, full of energy and had plenty of appetite. Olivia was still droopy, although better than she was earlier in the week. She mostly wanted to lie down, especially in a lap. Sunday, they both got booster shots at the humane society. Sunday night, Olivia got listless again, her cough worsening. She wouldn't eat anything except a little chicken and some milk. She wasn't drinking water. 

And I held her and cried.

On Monday, I talked to the humane society again, and they told me to bring her in. New antibiotic for the kennel cough. Discontinue the first antibiotic. Keep taking the second one. Let them know if the cough worsens.

And that sweet little girl has rallied. She woke up Tuesday feeling a little better. Wednesday, she was playful. Today, she is wildly active, making up for lost time by playing extremely active games with her sister. 

And I cried, because I don't want to keep them, but I don't want to see them go.

Wait, Audrey just PEED ON THE DAMN RUG. Olivia quietly laid here next to me on the floor and ate the tip end off a shoelace. Oh, puppies! Someday soon, I'm going to miss this.

Puppies, Pho, Bobas and More: Ten Things of Thankful

I seem to start a lot of my Ten Things of Thankful lists with "boy, am I tired after this week," but boy, am I tired after this week! What happened to relaxing over the summer? I need to go back to work to get some rest! But until then, here are my Ten Things of Thankful:

1. As some of you may already know, my daughter and I got the bright idea to foster puppies for the humane society. If you'd like the details of this, please read about them in Puppy Tails, Part I right here. I am still not a dog person, but the experience has been pretty good, and I'm glad we gave it a try (fyi - it's not over yet). By the way, when you endlessly stand outside in the grass, trying to convince two puppies to evacuate their bladders and bowels, you get eaten alive by mosquitoes and chiggers, including a big, itchy bite right on my ass. How did that happen? I WAS NEVER NAKED OUT THERE, I SWEAR!

Audrey

Olivia

2. My cats are being pretty good sports about the whole puppy fostering thing. They aren't happy, but they aren't off sulking all the time either.

Bathtubs are fun, unless the water is running.

3. Volleyball try-outs were this week, and my daughter made the junior varsity team. She was a nervous wreck the morning of try-outs, although I really do not believe she had anything to worry about. And I was right! Their first game is the second day of school.

4. And speaking of school, the superintendent has promised not only will the high school be ready for students on the first day, but the gym will be ready for the home opener volleyball game that second day of school. How awesome that they will get to be the first sport to play in the new school! (In case you didn't know, our high school was destroyed three years ago in an EF-5 tornado.)

5. I accidentally hit "delete" instead of "publish" when approving a blog comment, and I FIXED IT and didn't have to contact Marisa to say I totally screwed up and would she mind resubmitting her comment. Take that, technology!

6. It's time for Marian Days in the neighboring town of Carthage! This is the 37th year for the event, during which approximately 60,000 Vietnamese American Roman Catholics pilgrimage here to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary. We attended last year for the first time and loved it! In fact, I devoted my entire TToT entry that week to Marian Days. This year, we took my son with us one day. He was brave enough to try frog legs and said he enjoyed them, but a few bites were kind of "pondy". Yay for him for trying something new, as he is a pickier eater than I am! Even better was the teenaged Vietnamese girls who were following him around, giggling and taking pictures of the tall, good looking ginger.

7. We also discovered a delicious drink at Marian Days this year - the boba smoothie! While not brave enough to try some of the flavors offered (unidentifiable fruits, avocado, taro root), they did have strawberry and it was yummy!

8. I love pho! I have decided beef is my favorite, as it is very lean, and there are no mysterious pieces of uh, stuff, as there is the chicken pho. There are no Vietnamese restaurants anywhere in the area to get this bowl of deliciousness, so we have to get our fill once a year. Isn't that odd, since there is a Vietnamese monastery on the grounds of the church where Marian Days is held? 

Pho. Yum.

I suck at using chopsticks.

9. My husband and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary this week. Well, we didn't exactly celebrate it; we were on our way to have lunch at Marian Days and realized it was our anniversary. We're pretty low-key about that kind of stuff. 

August 7, 1993

10. I've taken the puppies outside to potty about a thousand times today, given them baths, picked up puppy poo from the yard, changed my hair color, took a couple of short cat naps with an actual cat, and have plans to go out to dinner with the College Boy this evening as we count down the days (four) until he goes back to school. Life is pretty good. That's a lot of thankful right there.

New hair color. Auburn, if you can't tell.

You know you want to join us in this, the 60th TToT. Link up, below!

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Puppy Tails, Part I

I am a cat person. Let there be no doubt in your mind. I live in a cat family. We have three of them, as a matter of fact: Fletcher, Pete and Ruby (have I ever mentioned her before?).

Maybe two weeks ago, I saw a news crawler going across the screen while I was watching The Today Show saying the Joplin Human Society was looking for people to foster puppies and kittens. Intrigued, I mentioned it to my daughter, and we then checked their website for more information. There had even been a recent feature on the local news about it. We thought it sounded like fun.

Knowing I am a cat person in a cat family, I knew we couldn't foster kittens. First and foremost, our cats would be so upset. Pete and Fletcher would probably pack up their bags and move, and Ruby would be all kinds of hurt. Besides, I also knew I wouldn't be able to give them up, and then we would go from a cat family to a crazy cat family with ten cats living in the house. But a puppy? I could do a puppy! I don't care much for dogs, but puppies are cute! Inspired by my friend Kristi, who fosters puppies to become service dogs, my daughter and I decided to give it a try.

I have never owned a dog before.

We began casually mentioning our plan to my husband and son, knowing they might not be on board so much. We visited the humane society a week ago and met with the woman in charge of fostering, who walked us through the animal area and pointed out all the dogs and puppies who were available for fostering. There was a litter of 6 that caught our eye. Half of them were black, half were blonde. They had been found on the other side of town and brought in just a day or so before and were very, very shy. We agreed to take two, one of each color, and they would be ready for pick up on Saturday. 

Olivia, left, and Audrey

We broke our plan to my husband and son at lunch time Saturday (at which time my husband proclaimed that I was Lucy and our daughter was my Ethel), and then we were off to pick them up. We were handed two little girls, whom we named Olivia and Audrey (after a friend of my daughter's and her sister), one black, one blonde, who were sweet and shy and desperately in need of a bath. A visit to Walmart for food, leashes and collars (pink, of course), a couple of toys, and some puppy shampoo, and we were home and had them in the tub, turning them into much more pleasant smelling puppies (they still smell like dogs, which is my main drawback for having one, but at least they smelled like CLEAN dogs). 

Here's what we learned about having our foster puppies within the first day:

1. There is nothing innate about walking on a leash.
2. They can and will chew everything.
3. They quickly figured out they would get a little treat for going potty outside, to the point where we're pretty sure Audrey fake-peed a time or two.
4. Audrey is like a goat and will eat any and everything she finds on the ground, including, but not limited to, ants, sticks, rocks, Hershey Kiss wrappers, cat fur, rug fringe, and flip flops.
5. They adapted very quickly from living in a kennel at the humane society to being inside a house and love to nap on my daughter as she lies on the couch and watches Netflix.
6. My husband and son, who didn't want anything to do with them, can often be found with a sleeping puppy in their laps.

7. They have no fear of cats.
8. Our cats have a serious fear of them, yet are drawn to them like magnets, especially Ruby. I believe they are trying to figure out what the hell they are, as they are clearly not cats but resemble nothing else in their world.

9. They are more trouble than my children were as infants, including having to get up with them more often in the night to take them outside to go potty (you clean out a crate with stinky puppy poo in it two times, you set the alarm and get up and take them out at 3 a.m.) than I ever had to get up and nurse a baby.
10. They are very, very cute but still do not make me want to own a dog.

It is the beginning of the Puppy Adventure. To be continued....