Fostering: The Hardest Job You'll Ever Love
by K. G.
October 16, 2018
Animal rescue has a lot of different moving parts and pieces to help just one animal make it to their forever home. There are the people who work at the shelters - providing interim and emergency care to animals who have lost their families. There are the people who network the dogs in need of help to try and find them a rescue or adoptive family. There are the people who donate to vet care and buy much needed supplies for rescues to operate with. There are the application processors, the transporters, the home checkers, the adoption event volunteers, the fundraisers… And then there are fosters. While each role is absolutely critical in ensuring a pup has his or her 2nd chance at happily ever after, the fosters have a job that is different than all the rest. They take in a dog in their stressed, sick, and sad state and make them happy. They teach them about love, about rules, about how to live in a house. They spend hours nursing sick dogs back to health. Days boosting up a dog who is scared and lacking confidence. Weeks showing a dog that the world is ok and that people are nice. Months loving a dog as if it were their own. And then they send the dog to someone else. To their forever home.
Dogs are such special creatures. They have the ability to overcome incredible obstacles and pain like no other and still love unconditionally. No matter the hardships they might have had in the past, they still stop to sniff the flowers and enjoy a peanut butter kong. At their core, they are happy and carefree. All the people who are part of the rescue puzzle want this for the dogs in their care: to be happy, and loved and carefree.
People always wonder how and why some foster. They say it will be too hard to give a dog up after putting all that effort in. That they don’t have the time to give. But when you see the change in a dog - going from being scared and sick to confident and happy, it makes the pain of giving them to their new family worth it. And fosters know that their rescue finds their dogs the BEST forever homes, where they will be loved and cherished just as much as they were in their foster home. As a foster, we try not to think about how hard it will be. We have to constantly remember our purpose. We are a chapter, a stopping place for a dog to lay their weary head, to recover from their past. A place for them to learn and grow. A place for them to become the dog they were always mean to be. We are the reason they have the 2nd chance at life. A family. A loving home of their own. We know that, without us, many dogs would never see the outside of their shelter kennel again. And so we open ourselves to the heartbreak of sending them on and we let them go. We send a part of ourselves with them every time. No matter where they go, they will always have our love and guidance to help them along the way.
Fostering is a journey. It will teach you a lot. And sometimes, you come across a very special dog that changes you as much as you change them. For us, that was Nala the Belgian Malinois. We are so lucky to have been honored and trusted with fostering her and helping her blossom into the wonderful dog we knew she could be. When she came to us, she was scared. She was nervous. She was skin and bones. Now, she is healthy, well balanced and the happiest dog we have ever met. She is ready for her forever.
We don’t know what her story was before our chapter- we can only guess that she was a victim of the classic cute Malinois puppy purchase who ends up being an outdoor, kenneled dog when her humans realized they didn’t have the time or effort to put into raising such a smart and driven dog. We can tell she had puppies, likely with the male she was found with.
She was found as a stray, wandering around 4th of July with a male Malinois. The finder brought them both home, but had to take them to animal services, as they were too much for him to handle. She and Mijo spent about a week there before being pulled to safety by American Belgian Malinois Rescue. They moved to boarding but, while Mijo handled the kennel ok, Nala began to shut down. She exhibited increasing kennel reactivity, was becoming hard to handle and eventually stopped eating. Her rescuers knew this situation was not what she needed and so one of their volunteers called me and asked if we could take her on an emergency basis to get her out of a stressful situation. We immediately said yes. We went to Lowes and got a baby gate to install between the living room and dining room, so she’d have a place to heal without Grizzly, our German Shepherd, trying to bother her. We got out our second crate. We got dog food, more tennis balls, and a second set of dog bowls. Ron, a rescue volunteer, helped bring her to the vet where she would be spayed and vaccinated before coming to us. He works tirelessly for ABMR dogs to make sure they have what they need. The team at the vet couldn’t handle her because she was so upset. They called Ron and he had to go back to help them, a full office team, restrain her to be sedated. She knew him, trusted him, and was not sure why new people were poking her and prodding her. After her spay, he brought her to me. She was drugged and unsure. The man who pulled her to safety was going to leave her behind with someone she didn’t know. Little did she know this was the best thing for her. He helped her get settled and it was obvious that she trusted him. We sat on the dining room floor and chatted, letting her explore and get to know me. When he left, she stood by the door and waited for him to come back. I sat. She joined me. I talked to her and told her everything would be ok. I pulled her new dog bed into the kitchen and put the special dog blanket that a good friend gave to me on it. She fell asleep watching me cook dinner with the tennis ball in her mouth.
When Jack got home, he sat on the floor with her cuddled up to him. He slept on the floor with her that night in the dining room, so she wouldn’t be lonely or scared in this new place. She slept the sleep of a dog who finally knew they were safe. I woke up at 5:30 the next morning to take Grizzly on our normal hike + fetch + obedience session before work and I saw Jack and Nala laying together in the same position, Jack’s hand on her chest. She looked for him after he left for work. She was still on drugs from her spay, but she drunkenly knew that he was missing. Between work and meetings, I sat on the floor with her, brushing her, cleaning her. Her fur was some of the grossest fur I’d ever felt. Dirty from being on the street, brittle from stress and lack of proper nutrition. We don’t know how long she was out there on her own, but she’d only been eating healthy dog food for about 2 weeks at boarding and needed much more TLC.
After a few days, when she was feeling a bit better from her surgery, we let her meet Grizzly. They went on multiple pack walks together and then finally met in an open field. They did great. He was excited to have a friend again. She was happy to be the queen bee between them.
We embraced our job as a foster family: to help prepare a dog for their forever home. To get to know them and teach them how to be a good family member, so we could facilitate finding them the right match, the perfect family. When she came to us, she was terrified of the crate. She wasn’t potty trained. She had very little training at all. She chose to sleep on the floor instead of a dog bed. She had some minor resource guarding. She watched Grizzly. Saw that dog beds were comfy, that we eat in our crates, that we potty outside. We worked on making the crate a positive experience and earning everything we are given. She quickly learned basic obedience and as she decompressed, proved to be extremely well balanced - walking perfectly on the leash, greeting children and strangers nicely and politely, not barking when other dogs bark at her. She tolerated Grizzly’s teenage playful advances with grace, she learned how to share the ball and other toys, she learned that tug is actually a really fun game. She learned that the best and coldest water comes from the toilet in the powder room. She decided she liked the crate. She decided the vet’s office isn’t so bad. She decided that belly rubs are her favorite. She decided that snuggling with Grizzly is ok, and that snuggling with people is even better. And while she learned and blossomed and decompressed, she decided that we were her family.
And so today is the day that Nala goes to her forever home. She doesn’t have to go far. In fact, she doesn’t have to go anywhere at all. She’s here to stay. Today is the day that she becomes our Forever Noodle. Our Permanent Noodle. A family of 3 goes to 4. The life she had before us is now just a prologue. Her story, her real story, begins with her rescue by ABMR and our chapter turns into more than a chapter. We get to finish her story. And we couldn’t be happier to have been given the honor to be her forever family. We are excited to help her be the best she can be and continue to help other dogs in need. She will be a great foster sister for future dogs who need a place to lay their heads. She will share her bed and her toys. She will show them that the crate is great, that we potty outside and that belly rubs are the best. She and Grizzly will be a great chapter in their story. But until that happens, she will be here, living her best life with Grizzly and leaving everything else behind.
