Blue goes home

I just got a wonderful update from the Washington Humane Society. Blue has been adopted! She is now called Emma and she's settling right in and learning tricks like crazy.

And she's already all dressed up for Halloween!

Brownie update and adoption policies

Though it's always a relief to find a wonderful home for a foster pup, I do always worry a bit about my foster babies when they go into their new homes. 

Will they fit in? Will they really be OK with the family cat? Will they get cuddled enough? Will they connect to their new people?

The Washington Humane Society, unlike some of the rescue groups I have worked with, does not put up extensive hurdles for adopters to jump over. As a municipal open-access shelter, they are focused on getting animals out of the shelter and into homes. As a general rule I'm in favor of this, at least when animals are still dying in shelters because the humans in charge of them could not find them a home.

And so far, for my ex-fosters, it's worked out! Sandy, Collette, Pager and now Brownie are all doing fantastic in their new homes. Here's the update I got from Brownie's new mom: 

Thank You again for introducing us to Brownie...his name has since been changed to Ralphie.  

He is such a happy boy!!! He loves playing with our other dogs and giving our 10 and 6 year old girls kisses on the face. He has turned out to be a great addition to the family.

Here he is playing/chewing on a rope/tug toy with our other male dog Spencer, the two of them love to play tug together!!!

Here he is relaxing on the couch with myself, my husband and 10 year old step daughter....he has taken a special liking to her!!! 

...I know none of us were sure about Ralphie and cats...well....he gets along great with our cat. Ralphie has become such a great family member...he is such a good boy....couldn't have asked for a better dog!!!!

Yay Ralphie/Brownie! I'm so glad you found your perfect family.

For those of you wondering about Blue, she is still at the shelter, I hope still having a good time. She was actually adopted too, by a lovely young couple, but was returned when the landlord and upstairs neighbor were uncomfortable with her...likely because of her breed. 

So there's a case where a bit of extra screening might have been a good idea, would have saved those adopters some time and heartache and saved Blue some stress. Still, on balance I think that at least until adoptable animals are no longer dying in shelters, we should err toward making adoptions easier, not more difficult. 


What do YOU Think?

Wet Tongue Wednesday

Big wet kisses everyone! We are taking advantage of our foster-free status the next few days to do some serious camping, hiking, dancing, and dining! 

It's my birthday on Friday and I can't wait to see what Florian, Lamar, and Fozzie have in store.

Meanwhile, my friend Jodi asked for an update on Blue. 

Still at the shelter, but having a  great time there!

She is part of the shelter's weekly P.A.C.K. (People and Animals Cardio Klub) runs, where volunteers come and run with the shelter dogs in the park on Saturday mornings.

She had a fab run over the weekend! Hard to imagine it, but it seems that WHS is a shelter where some dogs are even better off there than in a foster home.

Blue update

Here's the message I just got from the Washington Humane Society Foster Coordinator about Blue:

Kirsten, be sure to check out our Facebook Page to see Blue cuddling and being serenaded by a former American Idol contestant and Youtube sensation! He was smitten with her :-) The GAA staff all love her as well and she's already getting a good amount of interest from potential adopters. I'm sure she will be adopted soon!

Apparently American Idol finalist Todrick Hall went by the shelter to sing and spend some time with the shelter animals.  

WHS posted this on their Facebook page 

A very special volunteer came by the Georgia Ave Adoption Center today. American Idol finalist Todrick Hall spent time walking and singing to our cats and dogs. Here he is with "Blue" singing "you are beautiful" Be on the look out for the WHS edition of his YouTube show Toddy's World soon.

 See Blue, I knew you were destined for great things!

And another joyful update on an itty bitty pocket pittie: 

I just heard from Sandy's adopter, Chris, who wanted to remind me that it was a year ago today that I pulled Sandy from the shelter! 

Those two are totally in love and meant to be together...if I do nothing else right in this lifetime I'll be glad that I united Chris and Sandy.

Congrats to my scrappy pittie piglets!

Foster dog switcheroo

I've done something I've never done before, never thought I could do or would do. I brought Blue back to the shelter.

Lamar was growling and shrinking back every time he saw her, she was going after him every chance she got, and the shelter staff told me that they thought she could do well at the smaller of the two shelter facilities in DC, where things are quieter and dogs have a nice routine including 5 walks a day. I made them promise about 6 times that they would stay in touch with me about her, that they would keep her alive and work with her and keep trying to find another foster for her, and we made the arrangements for me to come on Wednesday and drop her off.

Then just after I got out of bed Wednesday morning, I must not have closed the baby gate to my room and Lamar's lair well enough, because another fight erupted. This time poor Lamar's ear has a nice cut in it and my hand is good and swollen from a puncture wound --I'm pretty sure inflicted by Lamar as he snapped wildly to try to defend himself.














If there was any doubt in my mind before, it was now dispelled. 

It was still incredibly hard to leave Blue in that shelter, surrounded by barking dogs. The only thing that made me able to do it at all is that in exchange I took away a dog who quite possibly needs a foster home even more than Blue.

This is Brownie.

My emotions were all over the place when I was at the shelter meeting him so I didn't think to find out anything about his past, but I do know that he's not been doing well at the shelter because every time a human comes by, he barks and yodels and yells so loud to get attention that he turns people off. 






The important thing is that we took him for a walk with Lamar, then Fozzie, and he had polite, shy mannerisms in response to their eccentricities. 

 
When Lamar growled, he looked away and backed up. When Fozzie lunged and barked and went all over the place, he play bowed a bit but mostly backed up.











The shelter staff warned me that he's a high-energy, rowdy young boy, so I was prepared for another one of those--


you know, one of those destructive, demanding, typical puppies who makes you wonder what it is about dogs that made you ever agree to live in a house with one, until you look at his face and see that big puppy head and those loving eyes and that wiggly wagging butt and fall in love.






When I got him home, he just wandered around sniffing gently. He seemed so happy to be wandering free in a quiet place! 

He likes Fozzie, and Fozzie seems tolerant of him. He continues his good, polite behavior around Lamar. 








He discovered immediately how great an orthopedic dog bed feels on gangly, bony adolescent joints. 

It's terrible to think of Blue in the shelter after having a taste of living in a home, but I am hoping that being there will be her fastest ticket to finding a permanent home. 











Brownie, who is currently stretched out to his full scrawny lanky length on the floor, is certainly a better fit here....even Lamar, while not thrilled to have another foster dog, is far less tense than he was when his little nemesis was here. I'm hoping that Brownie will let us get back in our foster groove and that Blue will find her perfect human quickly! 

Fozzie and Lamar--and Florian--thank you for your patience!

Wordless Wednesday

The Appalachian Trail

This weekend like true modern parents, we crammed as many events as possible in to make sure that Lamar, Fozzie, and Blue had the spiritual, physical, and emotional enrichment their growing minds need.

Saturday there was a dog fun day at a city pool in DC. Apparently a lot of city pools open up to dogs on the last day of the season, before they clean up and shut down for the winter.  

The Washington Humane Society let us know it might be a good opportunity for foster dogs to get some exposure. We brought Blue with her nice purple Adopt Me bandana, but it turned out dogs who came had to have a license. 

It was just as well; I'm not exactly fully at ease about Blue being around other dogs in such an exciting environment. What fun though to watch all the labs, beagles and other wet pups launch in and do the dog paddle.
 


So we used it as an opportunity for our girl to meet some other dogs under safe circumstances and see how she did. She did well--excited to see other dogs, but not overexcited like some other dogs I could mention. 








Then we brought her to DC's Eastern Market, one of my favorite places to go on a weekend. Lots of crafts, hippie dresses and local produce, and lots of people to meet and greet. She did great there too!

Saturday evening, we took Lamar and Fozzie with us while Florian taught a private ballet lesson in Virginia. It was a chance for me to take a nice, mellow walk with my boys in the cool post-storm evening air, and to watch the froggies jumping out in front of us as we walked. 

Did I just refer to a walk with Fozzie and Lamar as nice and mellow? Amazing what having three dogs, two of whom want to rip each other to shreds, will do! My sense of "normal" has shifted.

On Sunday, Florian took me to a section of the Appalachian Trail above Frederick, MD. 

I've always thought it would be cool to do a really long walk, ever since I read about the Peace Pilgrim--the woman who walked coast to coast spreading a message of peace and relying on strangers for food and shelter. 

I was also inspired by a book on tape I once listened to during a long road trip, Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods.  I don't remember the exact figures he cites, but I remember his potent message about how little, as a culture, we walk. 

Strip malls have replaced sidewalks until most walking anyone does is from the parking lot to the store, and then around the aisles until its back to the car for the drive home. Or maybe we drive to the health club, then find a place to park, so we can walk on the treadmill.

So there was something exciting to me about going on the mythical AT, where so many have gone for a really substantial walk and left behind that world of strip malls and treadmills.

Though not burdened by the enormous backpack of the through-hikers, we did have our own little challenges to surmount on our section of the AT.












Each time we encountered another dog on the trail I had to maneuver Fozzie into the woods on one side, but I found I'm so used to his outbursts by now that it doesn't even bother me to just pull him off trail and let him yodel away as the dog passes.

Though his harness and head halter combination makes him rub his nose against everything he can find--
 

grasses, ferns, the ground, your legs, your crotch--it sure does make it easier to manage him.













If I were going to walk the entire Appalachian Trail, would Fozzie eventually tire of flipping out every time he saw another panting frito friend?

Is that what we need to try, for Fozzie to reach the next level in his canine enrichment program?

Sign me up, I'm ready for a nice long walk in the woods.

Exfoliating with the Scrubba Scrubba Bath Mitt

One of the slightly perverse pleasures I derive from fostering is that many foster dogs come with their own minor health issues. The shelter provides whatever medication and follow-up care they need to heal, and as long as the dog is not a disaster when it comes to pill-taking--like our little friend Pager--it's an opportunity for me to learn about dog health and medicine. 

Blue came to me with some sort of skin rash. A few days ago it was a red, pimply rash covering her belly. 

Reminded me of when I was a kid and had chicken pox, but she didn't seem to be that itchy. 












I took her in to the shelter to see the vet tech, but she wasn't sure what it was! Didn't look to be a staph infection, certainly not mange, and it didn't glow in the black light she shone on it like you'd expect with ringworm. So she gave me some chlorhexidine shampoo and some cephalexin, which is the same combination that worked like a charm on Pager's staph infection. 

Two days later, Blue is looking much better! The red bumps are gone and now there are just these little dry bald spots from where the bumps used to be. 

She's still not very itchy, but since she loves to be rubbed I thought she might enjoy it if I broke out my newest grooming toy and gave it a whirl.





One of Florian's finest qualities is that he loves to check out the pet departments of his favorite stores when he is in-between teaching ballet classes during the day, and buy his girlfriend little dog-related gadgets. His latest find? The I Love Pet Head Scrubba Scrubba Massaging Bath Mitt. Yes, it's really called that.

So Scrubba Scrubba we did, and Blue loved it. We rubbed and scrubbed all over that little bitty flaky belly and removed a nice little quantity of dead skin and fur. 














The bath mitt was thoroughly pleasurable to use for both dog and human. 

See pile of dander in lower left.

And we had ourselves a nice little pile of dander to show for it. 



I can thoroughly believe the rumor that household dust is largely dead skin cells, 










especially if you happen to have a dog around with flaky bald spots.

What's YOUR favorite dander-removal strategy?

Gunpowder Falls State Park

This weekend, Blue got to go on what may have been her very first hike.

Her relations with Lamar have not improved, so rather than risk a blowout in the confined space of the van we left Lamar at home to relax. 

We didn't feel too bad about it, as we'd taken Lamar with us for a fun day at Aunt Nancy's the day before. 







Genghis was there too, and he's not Lamar's favorite person, but those two have figured out how to coexist.

Lamar and Blue are going to need some more work on that.  

So while Lamar rested, we drove up past Baltimore to one of the parcels of Gunpowder Falls State Park. 

I have fond memories of that park, as we went there for my birthday in 2008. I'm pretty sure that was the birthday when we spent the night before in the van in a Wal-Mart parking lot, as it was the only place we could find to park after being awakened at 2 am by a couple of park police and their flashlights and realizing we had parked right in front of a NO CAMPING - DANGER sign by some sort of power plant. 

That night, for the first and last time, I felt that Wal-Mart really DOES have some redeeming value.










In any case, we went to Gunpowder Falls on my birthday and had a delightful hike over huge boulders with Tashi and Lamar and our foster dog at the time, whose name was Foster. 












We waded in the river and then sat by it and had sandwiches and champagne.

The park is divided into a few areas, and I think the one we went to in 2008 was west of Baltimore. 

This time, we drove to a section that is closer in but no less beautiful. 

 

We learned that Blue is good in the car, and always ready for a smooch. 















Once we were on the vast network of trails in the park, Blue was excited to get on the trail but still pretty good on the leash.

She had no particular reaction to the cows we went by at one point on the trail (unlike her friend Fozzie).












We must have hiked for miles in the sweltering, positively Amazonian heat and humidity, and were looking forward to cooling off in the tantalizing Gunpowder River we could glimpse through the trees way at the bottom of the ridge we were hiking.

Bafflingly though, once we got to it we discovered the water was absolutely frigid! Blue wasn't the only one reluctant to go in. 

Our legs tingling, we hiked back out and somehow found our way through the network of trails back to the van.













Blue slept the whole way home and Fozzie smashed himself against the windows at parked cars a little less energetically than usual. 

What a beautiful place!

Maybe even better than a tiny goatie

is a tiny itty bitty pocket foster pittie!

Meet Blue. Blue was found as stray, covered in urine and stinking to high heaven. 

The shelter staff thought she might have been kept in a box or a crate, and finally managed to escape somehow. 












She was brought to the shelter, but didn't do so well there as she is shy when meeting new people. 

The shelter foster coordinator thought of me, as she knows I have a thing for shy dogs. I agreed to take her, sight unseen.

Blue is a tiny, velvety, calm, 31-pound pocket pittie. She loves me and Florian, loves to be pet, loves to eat, looks around her new home in shock and wonder. 

She's good on a leash and, at about 4 years old, seems to be totally housetrained and seems to enjoy the crate. 

She even likes having her teeth brushed!

She likes Fozzie and loves to follow him around. For some reason, she keeps trying to stick her tongue in his ear.  

Unfortunately, she and Lamar are not off to a great start. Lamar has this lovely habit of snarling at most new dogs he meets, in response to which Fozzie and the other recent fosters have all looked away and given him space. Not so our little bitty Blue--she took umbrage at his snarlies and decided to show him a thing or two. No real harm done, and she was easy to pull away, but poor Lamar is now scared to death of this little squirt less than half his size. 



Blue, respect your elders! Even if they ARE grumpy! 

Young woman, we are going to do some serious work on Wait and Leave It! And Lamar is going to get treats for watching you work! (Don't worry, you'll get treats too).








I am hopeful that even if she's a scrappy little thing, she can learn to temper those tendencies once she sees there's something in it for her.  

On the plus side, I've been so proud to watch Fozzie show such appropriate and mature signals all around. Toward Blue, he is tolerant and gentle. And with Lamar, watching how quickly Blue took offense made me realize just how tolerant Fozzie has been for 2.5 years of growlies. 

I love my household full of poorly-adjusted, personality-rich canines. 

May we all learn from each other how to live a greater degree of acceptance and equanimity.