2012 in Fosters - A Retrospective

As 2012 winds to a close, it's time to reflect on the foster dogs who came through this house in the past year.

Just like in 2011, all our fosters came from Southern states: Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They were adopted out all across the country: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alabama, Wisconsin, and Vermont are homes to our fosters now.

Here are the fosters we housed in the past twelve months.

1. Crookytail the Benevolent, RL1 (January 2012)
The One Who Stayed

Crookytail was my first pull from Robeson County, North Carolina. RCAS and neighboring Sampson County became the focus of my rescue efforts in 2012, in part because Liberty County's rescue team became so successful that their shelter's save rate went from 2% to 98%, and thus all the dogs I wanted to pull were spoken for before I got to them. Also, I'd gotten more confident about my ability to pick out good dogs instead of relying on other people to choose them for me.

Thus began the Era of Crookytail, in which he added his considerable talents to our fostering team, and everything got way better than it had ever been before. All the fosters start smiling in their pictures a lot more once Crooky joins the team.

This year, Crookytail went from a dog with absolutely no formal training to a titled Rally Obedience dog. Granted, he didn't love the sport and is retiring as a RL1, but I'm still proud of him, and in 2013 he'll be able to get back to his real job: guidance counselor to foster dogs.

2 and 3. Jackie and Erin (March 2012)
The Trailer Park Kids

After Crooky joined us as a permanent dog, I did puppies for a while because I didn't think I could handle three full-sized dogs. Little did I know that puppies are actually a WAY bigger pain in the ass. Jackie and Erin, the two on the right in that picture, were the first of our foster puppies. They were "found" in a cardboard box in a trailer park (in reality, the person who claimed to have "found" them was probably their owner who just didn't want to be held responsible for dumping a litter of puppies).

Because dogs in Robeson County frequently get no preventative care or vaccinations whatsoever, both of these puppies came down with parvo a few days after I pulled them. They had to go into the doggy ICU and get IVs for a few days. All told, their vet care cost about a thousand bucks, and Erin died anyway. Jackie survived and made it to Philly. She got adopted two days later.

4 and 5. Cerise and Razzmatazz (March - April 2012)
The Burnout Babies

I'll tell you a secret: even the best foster parents don't always love all their dogs.

These two were my least favorite fosters ever. It wasn't their fault, but I still never liked them very much. They had sarcoptic mange and were being treated with lime-sulfur dips, so they smelled terrible and I had to give them medicine four times a day and wash my hands every time I touched them and Dog Mob had to take preventative medicine too. Because they were itchy and miserable, they just wailed constantly and scratched all the time and were basically impossible to train. Because they were hound mixes, their wailings were LOUD, which did not endear them to me, as we live in a condo and our next-door neighbor was a doctor who was eight or nine months pregnant at the time and already not sleeping well.

We had these puppies for two weeks, then Cerise got adopted and Razz went to go stay with a lady who was fostering one of her other littermates.

6 and 7. Indy and Little Fox (April - May 2012)
The Melon Collies

These two little monsters were a couple of collie mixes that I pulled from North Carolina. Their mother was a collie mix; their fathers were probably two different dogs. Little Fox's father was definitely a German Shepherd (her owners were kind enough to tell the shelter staff that as they were dumping the mother), but Indy's father was most likely a yellow Lab or Lab mix.

A friend of ours decided to adopt Indy (the beige one), so I kept her a couple more weeks for basic training and put Little Fox up for adoption. Little Fox got adopted by a very nice older couple in Bucks County. Indy lives in Alabama with our friend now, where she eats his furniture and destroys his remote controls and is generally a massive troublemaker. I told him that was going to happen, but he insisted he wanted the tomboy and not the polite little lady, so that's what he gets.

After those two left, I decided I was never doing puppies again. NEVER.

8. Mab (June - July 2012)
The Smart One

That summer, some more friends decided that they wanted to adopt a dog, so they contacted us for help picking one out. I sent them a couple of possible candidates and they chose Mab, a little black border collie in RCAS. Mab got out of the shelter with about 90 minutes to spare. She turned out to be the smartest foster we've ever had -- just ridiculously quick to learn and easy to train. If she hadn't already been promised to our friends, I would have been sorely tempted to keep her, but as is I'm just delighted that she went on to such a good home. She lives in Vermont now and has a wonderful extended family of dogs.

9. Eldwin/Etta (August 2012)
The Happy One

Eldwin, who was later renamed Etta, was another foster dog that I was briefly tempted to keep. She was a little shepherd mix who came out of RCAS and also proved to be super smart, as well as happy and smiley and instantly endearing. Luckily she got an adoption commitment from a dream home with a young couple in Philly within two or three days of arrival, so I could file her away mentally as "taken" and stop myself from getting too attached. She was only with us for ten days, and it's a good thing, too. Any longer and she might never have left.

10. Tulip (August 2012)
The Short-Term Pee Sprinkler

I barely got to know Tulip, a beagle mix from SCAS who was in and out of here in less than 48 hours. She was sweet, but really timid and a major submissive urinator. Crookytail helped bring her around, and she showed a good bit of improvement in the short time she was here, but we didn't really have enough time to fix that issue, because Tulip got adopted almost immediately. Hooray, less pee mopping for me.

11. April (August - September 2012)
The Good Mama

April was a soft-hearted, gentle black Lab/border collie mix from rural Tennessee, where she had been found outside a branch bank with her daughter Scarlett. The local rescue hadn't been able to get her adopted, so they sent her and a few other dogs to my rescue group. Scarlett got adopted immediately (puppies always go first), one of our friends and his wife decided to adopt April soon after she got here, and I got to deal with the toughest potty-training case I've been faced with so far.

I owe a lot to the magic powers of Crookytail on this one. With his help, April was brought out of her depression and given a crash course in remedial socialization and successfully started on potty-training. She now lives with two cats in Wisconsin and is a very lucky dog. It turns out that she loves snow, which is good, because she'll be getting a lot of it out there.

12. Shelby/Sydney (October - November 2012)
The Box Dog

Shelby, later renamed Sydney, was yet another mama dog who sat in the shelter after her puppies had been adopted (although in Sydney's case, only one of her puppies actually got adopted -- the other died, probably of hookworms, before his adopters could pick him up). Although she was smart and sweet and blessed with exotic markings, no one seemed to want her. On her last day, the shelter director sent out a plea across Facebook for someone to pull this special little dog.

She was in rough shape when I pulled her; she was severely underweight and had a massive parasite load, including heartworms. Luckily, other generous people had been touched by the director's plea and donated hundreds of dollars to cover Sydney's medical bills. Even so, she had to spend a full month on crate rest before she could go up for adoption.

But Sydney came through heartworm treatment like a champ and proved to be an adaptable, friendly, quick-learning dog who went on to a great home in upstate New York with three other dogs. She was another one that I wanted to keep, because she was smart and had great hind-end awareness and a really nice natural side pass, but alas, I can't have three dogs. And she scored an excellent home, so I'm pretty happy with that.

And that is the recap of 2012 in foster dogs. In just a few more weeks, we'll saddle up to start again in 2013. Crookytail is excited and Pongu is filled with loathing at the prospect of bringing in some new foster fuzzbutts. I'm already scouting for prospects.

Jackie Goes Home

Puppies really are short-term tenants.

I took Jackie to her first adoption event with WAGS yesterday. Here she is in the car on the ride over, sitting in the puppy bucket so she can't pee in my lap.

It only took her half an hour to charm her way into a forever family. She is going to live with a nice couple and their older dog Miles (with whom she tried to play in the parking lot, although he didn't quite know what to make of this shrimpy little spaz at first) in York PA, where she will enjoy a lifetime of hikes and fun and maybe even some agility training.

...and that's it for our time with Jackie. I didn't even get to make a clip of socializing her to the nail clippers.

Now I have a week off until the next pups arrive. I'm told there is a puppy crisis going on around our rescue partners in North Carolina, so it is likely I'll be getting a foster mutt (or two, or maybe even three?) when the transport arrives next Sunday. I'll probably have that mutt-or-mutts for a very short time as well, and then... I dunno, guess we'll have to see who comes along.

Incidentally, yesterday's adoption event really brought home what a wimp I am when it comes to working at these events. I just have no stamina at all. Definitely need to do better than that -- other people are working at frantic intensity for six to eight hours nonstop, and I'm all "okay guys have headache going home now" after less than an hour. TOTAL WIMP.

(seriously though, sorry guys, I'll do better next time.)

Socialization With Jackie

Since I have an adorable foster puppy at my disposal for the moment, I made some clips on socializing a new puppy to some of the things that you might expect her to encounter in her future home. These are all very, very basic introductions -- literally the very first steps you might take with a puppy who had no previous acquaintance with any of these ideas. Jackie hasn't even been here for 24 hours, so I figured she'd give a more authentic reaction than my other half-trained mutts.

We spent this afternoon out on the street, camped in an alley about 10 feet removed from the bustle of South Street (which was extra bustling today on account of being a street full of tourist bars on St. Patrick's). Jackie got to meet old people, young people, kids of all ages, people using mobility aids, people so drunk they probably needed mobility aids, people wearing huge green leprechaun hats and necklaces of flashing green Christmas lights, and lots more. I didn't want her to get overwhelmed, so we only stuck around for half an hour and left while she was still having fun, but she probably met over a hundred people in that span. A cute puppy in an "Adopt Me" vest on a crowded street grabs a lot of attention.

After dinner, with the average BAC on the street steadily rising, we retired indoors to do some socialization practice with objects instead of people.

To start, you need a drawer full of props (Kong rubber brush, Furminator metal brush, toothbrush with chicken-flavored doggy toothpaste, nail clipper, bowl of kibble, assortment of tasty treats) and one puppy:

The first exercise we did was just familiarizing Jackie to the grooming tools by giving her the opportunity to investigate them (and, being a puppy, chew on them) at her own pace. I scattered some kibble and treat pieces around the tools to encourage her to sniff at them, but as it turned out those weren't needed.

Once she'd lost interest in them, I moved to the next step: gently brushing her with the Kong rubber brush. The intent isn't to actually brush her (as a fuzzy puppy, she doesn't need a real brushing anyway), but just to familiarize her with the sensation. This is usually the least objectionable part of grooming for most dogs, so I think it's the best place to begin. The rubber Kong brush is less scratchy than the Furminator, so that's the one I used initially.

Next up: the toothbrush.

I put some doggy toothpaste on the brush and let her decide to eat it. While she was chewing, I moved the brush slightly to approximate the way it would move for a real toothbrushing. When the toothpaste was just about gone, but before Jackie lost interest in it, I took the toothbrush away, leaving her wanting more of the "treat." Next time the toothbrush comes out, she's a little more likely to regard it with anticipation.

Lastly we worked a few rounds of Doggie Zen.

The "official" game of Doggie Zen is to hold a treat in a closed hand so that the dog knows you have it but can't get it. The instant that the dog gives up trying to chew the treat out of your hand, you click that moment of acceptance and open your hand so the dog can get the treat.

As simple as this exercise is (and it is very simple, and most dogs grasp it very quickly, such that I've seldom had to play more than one day's worth of strictly defined Doggie Zen before shaping it toward Watch Me, Leave It, Look At That, or any of the other myriad concepts that Doggie Zen leads to), it's important because it introduces impulse control and the idea of "availability" -- that some good things in life may appear to be available but aren't actually available until the handler makes them so.

So while it seriously only takes about five minutes in your life to teach Doggie Zen to most puppies, it's five minutes you might as well spend, because a whole lot of other stuff builds off that simple idea.

Jackie Arrives

Late last night, a little after 11:30 p.m., Jackie came off the H.O.P.E transport van, crossed a Northeast Philly sidewalk, and toddled on home to stay with us for a while.

Crookytail loved her almost instantly, but Pongu didn't take kindly to the interloper. By the next morning he wasn't trying to kill her anymore, but he's still definitely the Jerk Uncle ("oh my god, don't touch that! No don't touch that one either! Ugh you little hooligan, when are you going home?!") to Crookytail's Cool Uncle ("yeah sure kid, you can play with all the toys").

After so much excitement, Jackie went back in the puppy box (aka Biscuit's guinea pig pen) and pooped out...

...although not so much that she couldn't wake up when she caught me taking pictures.

And that's where we are for now. I took Jackie out for half an hour this afternoon to socialize her to strangers by having them feed her treats on the street. She did a great job (pretty impressive on St. Patrick's Day with a bunch of noisy, half-drunk strangers coming up right to her face!).

We also started work on a couple of foundational games like Kibble Toss (three goals on this one: (a) priming the marker word "Yes!"; (b) teaching the dog to "learn how to learn" by building an association between cue from person = fun games and treats!!; and (c) laying some foundations for a true recall by repeatedly giving the puppy incentives to turn around, re-orient back to me, and return as quickly as she can).

I don't really expect to have her long enough to make much progress in training, but you never know, so we might as well do what we can in the time that we have.

The Trailer Park Kids and Parvo

It's been a trying couple of weeks.

Since I foster failed on Crookytail and he became a permanent member of Team Stupid (which is itself a story for another day), I'm trying to foster small puppies instead of full-size dogs for a while. Puppies can live in the guinea pig pen and will most likely get adopted quickly, so I figured they'd be a less time/space-intensive way of continuing to foster within our condo's limitations.

My first few attempts at getting foster puppies bombed out, though, because these guys have to be little to live comfortably in Biscuit's pen, and there just weren't any small enough that were up for rescue at the time. A couple of weeks went by, and then the Trailer Park Kids landed at the Robeson County Animal Shelter.

These four baby mystery mutts were "found" in a trailer park and taken to the shelter as strays. It's likely that the person who claimed to have found them was, in fact, the owner; quite often people try to duck responsibility for abandoning their own dogs by claiming that they're strays. But regardless, the Trailer Park Kids hit the shelter in early February.

There were two males and two females in the litter. The males are slightly curly-coated and are on the left side of that picture. The females, Jackie and Erin, have slightly shorter, straighter fur and are on the right.

As more and more puppies flooded into the shelter, and it seemed like these plain brown mystery mutts might get overlooked while adopters lined up for the wire-haired terrier pups and eye-catching merle Aussies, I pulled the two girls. Erin and Jackie went to South Robeson Vet Clinic to wait out their 10-day quarantines. A few days later, the boys went home with private adopters.

One week after Jackie and Erin left the shelter, RCAS shut down because of a distemper outbreak. Canine distemper is a constant threat in Robeson County, where a dense population of raccoons acts as a year-round reservoir for the disease. Although distemper is easily prevented by a cheap and readily available vaccine, many people in the county simply can't be bothered to save their dogs' lives for $4.

Dogs are vaccinated against distemper and parvo upon intake at RCAS, but the vaccine needs time to be effective. The outbreak gave them none. Within a week, over 40 animals lost their lives to distemper.

Because distemper is such a nasty disease -- the estimated mortality rate is 90%, and even dogs who survive often have severe, lifelong neurological damage, leading most shelters to euthanize animals immediately upon diagnosis -- and the Trailer Park Kids left the shelter just before the outbreak was announced, they spent an extra week in quarantine as a precaution.

On the last day of that quarantine, Erin collapsed with parvo.

Canine parvovirus is the other major disease that afflicts Southern shelter puppies. Although less of a death sentence than distemper, it's more common, because the virus can live longer outside of its host. Provided the pups receive aggressive and prompt treatment, parvo's estimated fatality rate ranges from 20% to 50%, depending on the age, size, and health of the puppies afflicted. Without treatment, fatality can go as high as 80 to 95%.

It's probable that Erin and Jackie were exposed to parvo before they left RCAS. Both had loose stools and were not in the prime of health when they arrived at the vet clinic, although they were initially diagnosed with coccidia (an extremely common, less deadly bacterial parasite that causes many of the same symptoms as parvo) instead. If that's the case, I fear the worst befell their brothers. None of the local vet clinics reported receiving them (as other puppies came down with parvo at the same time that the Trailer Park Kids did, RCAS rescuers made an effort to tally the cases and measure the extent of the outbreak), and untreated parvo in puppies that small and that young is almost always fatal.

Even with immediate and aggressive treatment, Erin died 12 hours after being diagnosed with parvo. Hers was an aggressive and fast-moving strain, and she and her littermates were small, young, and susceptible.

Erin's death was the first time I have ever lost one of my rescue dogs. It is an unhappy milestone, but one that every rescuer and foster has to confront sooner or later. If you do this long enough, eventually you will lose. Even if you don't go out of your way to take the hard cases (and I definitely don't), eventually you lose.

It happens. But knowing that doesn't make it much easier.

I never even met Erin, but that didn't make it much easier either. You second-guess yourself: what if I'd had the puppies boarded at a different vet clinic? What if I'd had her in foster care? Would that have changed the outcome? Or would it just have exposed other dogs to parvo and made things worse?

There's no way to know, and no way to change what's been done.

And, anyway, the story's not all sad.

Although she didn't show any symptoms other than loose stool (which, as noted, was ambiguously attributable to coccidia and not a sure indicator of parvo), Jackie was put on Tamiflu as a preventative as soon as her sister was diagnosed. This turned out to be a wise precaution, as she came down with full-blown parvo a day after Erin died.

Perhaps because of the Tamiflu, or because she was a little bit stronger, or just through the random whims of fate, Jackie pulled through the disease after three days of touch-and-go doubtfulness. As of this writing, it looks hopeful that she'll make a full recovery and be able to take a transport up to Philadelphia at the end of next week. Two weeks behind schedule, but we'll be grateful to have her at all.