Vince went to his forever home yesterday and Victor leaves today. So happy we gave these 11-week-old boys a way station for the past week.
Our family began working with a local animal rescue in Newport News, Virginia several years ago. After eight-and-a-half months of fostering, we adopted our Tucker in November 2016. In the local foster world, we call this a foster fail though it is only a failure in that we had to stop fostering for a while. This was so we could train and raise our new boy and renovate our kitchen. Last week, our new animal rescue, http://www.4pawz.org visited us for a home check and a another foster brought us Victor and Vince, lab mixes of the 31 flavor variety.
These boys looked like Tucker’s offspring! It was ironic to end our former fostering days and begin our new ones with such cloned-looking pups. A sign? I think so. The sign we didn’t get was the warning that fostering pups now would be difficult and so different because of two scenarios: first, we just finished a major kitchen renovation; and second, we had 75-lb. Tucker.
Mind you, we did have puppy rescue in mind while we renovated. We chose porcelain flooring that would withstand the bodily functions of small pups and furniture (couch and recliner in the sitting area) that came with a five-year-no-questions-asked warranty for complete replacement. All the planning left out the fact that the pups wanted to chew on our custom-built barstools (which had no warranty and was their hiding place from Tucker) and the corral that kept them out of the remainder of the house damaged the doorway trim.
But the bigger obstacle was Tucker. He is a sweet, but big dog, that doesn’t realize he’s big. He thinks he is a 10-lb. pup just like the other two. After watching him gut punch one and toss the other a few feet with his nose, we had to keep them separated with only inside/supervised visits. Before anyone is concerned, Tucker was only exercising his ability and natural need to exert dominance over Victor and Vince. All I could think about was a pup wiggling the wrong way and being injured on our watch.
So once Victor leaves for his forever home, we will foster adult dogs for a while in hopes that Tucker (who will be two in July) will settle down and lose some of his toddler/teenager exuberance. As we believe he is a lab/great dane mix, I’m not so sure about that.
But, as my husband, Keith says, this doesn’t mean we won’t foster puppies in future….because they’re so cute. Hmmmmm……..
