Confessions of a First Time Foster

Angel has gotten flirtatious this morning. This means that she wriggles her tush in Cognac’s face, looks back at him with a come-hither smile in her eyes, and runs away. When Cognac follows, well, all I know is there are squeaks. But obviously some sort of “no luck” message gets communicated. Hmm, now Cognac seems to have given up the chase. But Paris looked at it, and insisted on getting down from the computer desk. She wanted to play. The thing that she generally doesn’t do with other dogs, play! (For that matter, the thing that Angel wouldn’t do with a little Jack Russell puppy at her previous home.) She and Angel are now chasing each other and zooming together. No bitey-face so far, which I suppose is better for my peace of mind this early in their acquaintanceship. But I’m thrilled. This was one of my three reasons for going into fostering! (The others being finding a dog who will dote on Papa and helping some really sweet dogs.)

Of course, now that they seem to be all done, it occurs to me to look for my camera. Ah well, next time!

As I type this now I’m even more thrilled. I followed them into the living room with the camera, hoping for some action shots. Well, I got them — of Angel playing with toys for the very first time. She doesn’t seem to know quite what she’s supposed to do. And she won’t learn fetch, for instance, from any of my bunch! But she can certainly get a toy exterminator’s license following Paris’s example.

I’m far less sanguine about the other development so far today. We’ve been confining Angel to the kitchen while she eats. Mostly to protect her meal from Cognac. But she was too frantic about getting unconfined to eat her breakfast. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the pattern yesterday, too. Although she ate some dinner, thank goodness. Ordinarily, people say that dogs won’t starve to death; pick up the bowl and she’ll eat the next meal, or the one after that. But this is a dog who starved herself out of a puppy mill. She’s a determined little non-eater when she wants to be. So I’m worried.

I took a break and called Lynn, the network coordinator, about the matter. She looked at the ingredients for the sausage we serve and approved it as Angel’s only food. As for whether she’ll eat it, Lynn says not to worry and keep meal-serving as we have been. (Putting the food down and picking it back up whether she has eaten or not.) As I was talking to Lynn about it, I realized that Angel has almost certainly been used to grazing — having a bowl put in her crate and left there for her to pick at whenever she wants. So it may be that this is just another new thing that she has to get used to.

OTOH, I loved reporting one wonderful event from yesterday to Lynn: I dropped Angel’s leash while we were outside. Okay, that’s not wonderful, especially with her in heat and a cocker spaniel stud living next door. But no cocker spaniels appeared on the scene, and Angel raced at full speed for . . . the back door! The back door! (I actually managed to catch up and step on her leash before she got there, but I’m sure that’s where she was headed.)

Angel has a home for the first time.

A quick update: Angel has learned to climb up stairs and jump off the couch; she’s still working on the reverse directions. Cognac has been firmly rebuffed; he cried about it yesterday. I suspect Angel just isn’t ready. But we have to walk the dogs separately now. (Which in turn means I’m getting up with Papa at o’dark thirty, and very tired.) Angel is getting affectionate by leaps and bounds, so I’m feeling more charitable towards her previous owner — she has to have socialized Angel more than I thought. I should apologize for my previous tone toward her! Angel is still scared of Papa, but then we knew she was scared of men. (Since she is especially scared of men with beards — go figure — it’s lucky that Papa is clean-shaven.) Unfortunately, the urine sample that we dropped off yesterday had too much blood in it (from her being in season) to be analyzed.

I just had a golden afternoon with Angel. She’d been given some quiet time in her crate. But she scratched at the crate door, so I gated off the kitchen to give her a quiet zone with open access to her crate. After an hour or so, she was stretching up to look over the gate. So I diapered her (itself a nice cuddle opportunity) and then took down the gate. This led to a period of exploration, with the thrilling development that her tail was curled up over her back for the very first time!

Then she asked to come up on the couch. So I picked her up. It’s really a futon, and we had left it folded down so the three dogs would have lots of room. In this case, Angel had a whole corner to curl up in all by herself, while I gave Paris some much-needed petting. After a while, though, Angel came up and nudged me for petting! That was incredibly sweet. And it was extraordinarily satisfying to respond to her various requests, because I knew that no one else in her whole life had ever cared what she wanted. The other big development today was that Angel actually took a treat from my hand. She’s still not sure she wants to repeat the experiment, but it’s progress!