Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesinaz
Wish I could do that. Wife unit is not a dog person and taking in a rescue means understanding there might be bumps on the road. Good on ya for reaching out to an abused animal.
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volunteering is work. we adopted marcus from the start. whisper was intended on being a foster, but after figuring out she was abused and how sweet she was we could not give her up. after that, we somewhat fostered five dogs.
the first foster was cool. mature dog, but not a senior dog. good manners, went home in about a week.
second foster was aggressive with marcus from the start and we would need to be able to leave the dogs alone for a few hours a day to make it work. so she had to go back to the kennel.
third foster had giardia (bad, very contagious diarrhea). back to the kennel the same day.
fourth foster just had puppies and bled on stuff on occasion. went home in about a week.
fifth foster was the best one we had (we would have kept him if we didn't already have two). big guy with a good heart. neighbors down the street ended up adopting him.
with our work schedules, three dogs was just too much work. potty and feeding time becomes a herding situation. it felt like we were running a farm. and it was always a crapshoot if the newcomer was house trained. lol shepherds are very smart, but the tv remote still had dimples in it as well as my sandals if i forgot to put them up.
what you could do, if you're interested- is volunteer at a local rescue. they need people to walk dogs, represent the rescue at local adoption events, and other stuff. my wife doesn't really have any hobbies, so once we agreed to no longer foster, she spends more time reviewing applications, conducts home visits of potential applicants, returning email inquiries, and phone consultations. she has also made several close friends through the rescue and they meet up and walk their own dogs and stuff like that. so her volunteer time has led to friendships and networking on top of helping the animals- very rewarding.