foster dog

The Foster Chronicles: ‘Nita, Week 1

The beginning of ‘Nita’s story: The Foster Chronicles: It Begins Again

Day 1

The rescuer and I make arrangements. I meet Bonita in a Food Lion parking lot. She wags. She tosses her head. And she shnurffles. Squee!

We ride home in the rain. I pull into a Shell, and while my gas is pumping, I get in the back seat and snuggle with her. Sweetness doesn’t begin to describe.

Redford and Violet are anxious to meet her, and she them, but I’m following the rules (some of them) this time: two-week shutdown. Not just because the kinks never got worked out with Tulip and it was probably my fault for not doing the shutdown, but also because my foster is recovering from an upper respiratory infection. Don’t need to be giving my dogs kennel cough if I can help it.

She goes potty in the yard and does a few shuttle runs, and then ‘Nita and I chill on the couch and watch Netflix.

Day 2

No house accidents; still pottying perfectly in the yard. (She’s one of those dogs that walks while pooping as if to get away from it. I understand the impulse—it’s like giving yourself a courtesy flush.)

‘Nita does not enjoy her kennel and refuses to get in. I have a meaty treat in my hand, but she runs into the other room and peeks back at me. I’m going to be late for work, so I have to lead her by the collar and give her a little push inside.

When I get home from work, she’s leaping off my bed. I have forgotten to put the carabiner on the side gate. She’s clearly been reading my library book during the day. I tape the cover back.

She's clearly been reading my library book in bed. I tape the cover back. Good as new. — Good as new.

The shutdown rules say no walks, but that feels cruel, especially considering she’s only 1-2 years old. With ‘Nita on my right side and Redford and Violet on my left, we do the 2.5-mile loop around the neighborhood. Ah, yes, I remember this.

Did you know that you have a set of muscles that you use only for walking three dogs between 55 and 85 pounds? It’s true. The tri-caninus dorsi. They cover the area of your mid- and upper-back, lats, shoulders, neck, and triceps. And biceps. Also forearms, and sometimes glutes. It’s a large muscle group.

After the excitement of the first five minutes, ‘Nita does pretty well on the leash. She does lunge at a squirrel. And at a meow-squirrel who’s luxuriating in the crazy meow-squirrel lady’s yard. And then at one of those squirrels with wings that flies and goes tweet. But her favorite kind of squirrel is the mutant metal squirrels with round legs that run down the road and go vroom. Oh, man, she wants those vroom-squirrels so bad.

Other than that, she’s a gem.

Day 3

‘Nita chews on a tube of conditioner that was sitting on the edge of the bathtub.

I remember to put the carabiner on the side gate of the kennel before I head to work.

Upon my return home, I find Bonita still in the kennel, yes, but the tray, which now has bite marks on one end, shot out across the floor, the old sheet I put in there for her comfort shredded and strewn about, and

and five feet of divots in my bedroom wall. — five feet of divots in my bedroom wall which she must have accomplished by bucking like a bronco.

I literally say, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

Ah, well. I’ve been meaning to paint my bedroom anyway.

Another 2.5 miles. My tri-caninus dorsi are super-jacked.

Day 4

‘Nita chews on her food bowl a little bit. I tell her no, and she stops.

I start ringing the bell when we go out to the yard to teach her to ask to go out.

She still doesn’t want to get in the kennel, and she’s pretty serious about it. She’s developed a resistance technique whereby she flattens herself against the floor and, when I try to pick up her front paws to put them in the kennel, she lifts her chin higher than the height of the kennel. It’s a good strategy. But there are two reasons my species has survived and dominated, and they are opposable thumbs and cunning. I lift up her back feet like we’re playing wheel barrow, which brings her head down, and walk her right in.

2.5 miles. No big. I’m strong like bull.

She almost sits when I give her her supper.

Day 5

I keep ringing the bell every time we go out.

My friend lends me a bigger, plasticker crate. Magic impenetrable comfy jail cell. No more prison breaks/crate tornadoes.

The hard part is not the 2.5 miles a day. The hard part is the dog shuffle in the house. How did I do this for seven months with Tulip?! Plus the dogs really want to meet, and I really want them to meet. I want us all to make a pile on the couch and watch Netflix like we used to do with Buffy.

Nothing like a dog high-five to make you realize how dusty your TV screen is.

Day 6

No walk. I’m out for several big chunks of the day. I feel bad putting her back in the kennel when I head out in the evening so I just close her in the spare bedroom. She’ll be fine.

Wait. This feels familiar.

Day 7

We do 4 miles to make up for yesterday. As we pass the dog park, I’m tempted to put them all in there and just get it over with. Neutral territory. They’ve already walked for 45 minutes when we pass by the second time so they’re tired. What damage could it do?… NO. I must be strong.

I don’t think I’m going to last two weeks though.

At 6:37pm, Bonita rings the bell to ask to go out.

She keeps trying to help edit this post.

The Foster Chronicles: Week 2

Tweedly Tweedly Dee

Hey, do you follow me on Twitter?

If you don’t, you’re missing so, so much. For example, this insightful analysis of the third presidential debate:

Third Debate — I’m a foreign policy expert.

While you’re at it, Like my Facebook page too. For crying out loud, Tulip has more Facebook Likers than I do, and I’ve been hammering away at this shit for years.

(I will try to put up a real post tomorrow, friends. All my words for the week got syphoned off into a piece of thinly veiled fiction about a river tubing trip that I barfed out [the story, not the trip] for my writing workshop. But it’s not even good yet, so I can’t post it here. Plus, I’ve been staying up past my bedtime again because the subject matter of the short story is making me all agitated. I need to go to bed now.)

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 25

Here’s the beginning of Tulip’s story.

Day 1

I give Tulip her heartworm preventative and flea/tick treatment. I take Violet and Redford’s doses out of the cabinet and set them on the counter to remind myself to apply them when they come inside.

As I sit at the computer, Tulip finds something at my feet and munches it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s gone by the time I realize what’s happening.

A few minutes later, I go back in the kitchen and notice there’s only one dose of meds on the counter. I search for the second. Nowhere. Is it possible my foster dog ate a tube of Revolution? Yikes. I observe her for twitches and/or explosions. Nothing.

Day 2

I still can’t find that tube.

Loose dog again on the walk. He gets real close, and Redford goes bananas. A woman driving by says, “Do you need help?” I tell her, yes, can she please put her car in between the loose dog and my dogs until I can get far enough away? She does. Kindness of strangers, saving my ass all over the place these days.

Day 3

At 8:30pm, before our walk, I drive my car around the loop hoping to catch a better glimpse of the loose dog in order to give Animal Control a description tomorrow. He’s not out.

We do the short loop just to be on the safe side.

Day 4

The babysitter picks up Tulip after work. Do you think Tulip could learn to get along with other dogs?, she asks. I tell her, based on the one session with the volunteer from CCB, yes. Because she was thinking maybe her dog, the one she has joint custody of with her ex, needs a sister…

…!

Days 5

I get a phone call from Tulip’s babysitter. Tulip crapped on the dining room floor, and is there a signal she uses to indicate she needs to go?

Dammit.

I tell her no, she hadn’t pooped inside since her intestines were infested with worms months ago.

Day 6

I get a Facebook message from the babysitter saying Tulip took about 24 hours and “now it’s like she’s lived here her whole life”. She thinks Tulip’s “found her home” if [CCB] will let her do it and if she can be OK with her pooch.

…!!!!!

Not getting my hopes up though.

Day 7

The babysitter emails to say Tulip has developed a fan club in the neighborhood. She’s met dogs without incident and settled in like she’s lived there her whole life. The babysitter can bring her back to me after supper “or just keep her forever”.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Still not getting my hopes up.

I tell her she can keep her as long as she wants. In her next message, her tone seems to change a little: The president of CCB hadn’t responded, and she really wanted to hear her thoughts and ideas about handling any introductions. “And who knows?” she adds. “She might not even think that Tulip coming here for a furever home is a good idea. We’ll see.”

…?

She brings Tulip back to me at 8:30pm and tells me she spoke with the organization. They’re going to do a home visit and meet her other dog.

But she already submitted the adoption application.

Must not. Get. My hopes up.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 26 (The End?)

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 24

Don’t know Tulip? Start here.

Day 1

It’s dark. By the time all of us see it, the cat luxuriating in the street gutter is a mere four feet away. Redford and Tulip are like, “DIBS ON THE NOMS. JINX BUY ME A CAT.” I manage to control Tulip, but in the melee, Redford ends up standing on his hind legs with his claws in my upraised forearm. I walk away from the cat, pushing him. He’s bunny-hopping backward. For a moment, I’m doing Krav Maga against my dog.

Big old welts in the flesh of my forearm when I get home. Asshole.

Feremin! — Tulip considers starting a band.

Day 2

After my airport debacle, Tulip gets to play at Auntie Wa’s house again. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

Day 3

Day 4

I hear Tulip scrabbling at the door. When I open it, I see she has scratched two scratchy spots in the deck. Is there an animal living underneath my deck that she’s trying to get to? Because that’s what I need. An animal living under my deck.

CCB likes to have pictures of the dogs with their foster people so I attempt to snap a picture of me and Tulip together.

I try again.

Day 5

Redford and Violet’s bestie Barley the Dog comes over for a four-day slumber party while her mommies are out of town. She learns the dog shuffle in a jiffy.

Day 6

In preparation for future travels, I’m trying to line up doggy-sitters for Tulip. She goes for a test-drive slumber party at a prospect’s house. (Don’t get excited; this woman won’t adopt Tulip because she has joint custody of a big female pit/lab mix with her ex-husband.)

I get a call about 8:00. Tulip’s peed on the carpet twice; do I have any suggestions?

Tulip! >:/

No, I don’t. Redford gets confused by carpet too (“It’s grass! But inside!”). I tell her just to let her out as soon as she comes out of the crate and every couple hours.

Day 7

I pick her up from the sitter. The woman says there were no more potty incidents after our call. Phew.

Tulip got hella cuter in the last 20 hours.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 25

Come Fly with Me

Tuesday, right at dismissal, after a shit day at work (because of a co-worker, not because of the kids; the kids are awesome this year), I headed to the airport to pick up my dad. Of course, if I hadn’t been fuming, I might’ve thought to check the flight status online before I left work and seen that it was an hour and a half delayed, but I had been, so I didn’t, and it was.

So I drove home.

An hour later I drove back to the airport, but smart me, I threw Tulip in the car because I thought, “I’ll scoop Dad, and we’ll go straight to Wa’s, where Tulip can patrol the fence and play Leap Frog with the kids.”

I pulled up to the baggage claim and looked for Dad. He wasn’t outside. I peeked in the doors but didn’t see him. A cop on a Segway, who I thought was going to chastise me for walking too far away from my car, instead gave me the phone number for the Airport Information desk and told me they would page him. (Airport Segway cop ftw!) I called, and they were really nice, and they did.

But Dad is more than a little hearing impaired and significantly ADD. I doubted he would hear the page. I waited ten minutes. Tulip was panting in the car. I called again; they paged him again. Nothing.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t take Tulip into the airport, but it was hot as the dickens outside, so I couldn’t leave her in the car, even for ten minutes. I called my sister. Had Dad called? No. She said there’s a place upstairs inside called The Meeting Place, and she had always met him there.

Shit.

I drove to the parking deck. Tulip and I walked to the upper level of the terminal. It occurred to me I should just walk in like I owned the joint, pit bull and all, but I chickened out when I got to the doors. The Meeting Place was a hundred yards away. I couldn’t see my dad. After ten minutes of squinting and fretting, a woman who had seen me came out and said, “I’m killing time until my flight. Do you need help?”

I said, “Thank you so much! I think my dad might be sitting over there. Can you hold my dog while I run in and check?”

She said, “Will your dog be OK with that?” I assured her she would, and the woman agreed happily. (Kindness of strangers ftw!) I jogged across the concourse and did a sweep of the waiting area. No Dad.

You’re probably asking yourself why I didn’t just call his cell phone. Well, see, because my dad is bad at technology. His most recent cell phone—and you can extrapolate about previous cell phones from this, his most recent cell phone got packed, in my father’s fashion, in a grocery bag with some other items including a bottle of mouthwash and ended up minty fresh.

But if he was in the airport, why didn’t he just call you? That’s what you’re thinking now. Because another thing my dad is bad at? Remembering phone numbers. Even phone numbers you’ve had since 2005. (Good at: losing carefully scribed lists of phone numbers placed lovingly and repeatedly in his wallet.)

I went back out to the car. And one thing you should know, if you don’t already, about the hourly parking deck at RDU is that the signs that say EXIT and have arrows—ha ha, they’re just kidding! They don’t point to exits. They point to passages that used to lead to exits which are now blocked off by concrete barriers and dividers. But—ha ha—not to exits, silly! After about six thwarted attempts to extricate myself from that goddamn garage, I was about to blow a fucking gasket. I might’ve gotten to third gear on one pass through the deck. It’s possible.

I finally found an EXIT sign that lead to the actual exit, paid a dollar for the pleasure of having parked there, and did another lap through the whole airport (Oh, hello again, Terminal 1! Big Ben! Parliament!) to swing back through the arrivals lane.

My sister called then and said Dad had left a message half an hour prior on her home phone (he had remembered that number!, but the ringer was off because it was nap time), saying he was at the baggage claim. Aw for god dog dog. Tulip was whining. I was losing it. My sister offered to come to the airport. “No!” I said. “He’s got to be twenty feet from me! I just can’t get to him!”

Seething, sweating, panting, cursing.

I took a deep breath and, once more, called Airport Information. Again, the woman was lovely. I asked could she page my dad; the only problem, see?, is he’s mostly deaf and he may not hear it. The woman said, “Can you describe your father? Maybe I can find him for you.” I gave her his specs, and we hung up. She called me back two minutes later: “I have your father standing in front of me. I’m going to walk him out to you now.” Which she did. She even carried his bag. (Airport Information staff ftw!)

Dad got into the car (“No, I didn’t hear any pages”), and we headed to Durham in the middle of rush hour traffic. My nearly-74-year-old dad had been up since 4:30 in the morning, taken two flights with a layover in Philly, and wandered around RDU for an hour and a quarter, wondering if anybody was going to get him. After about six minutes of chit chat, he smiled and said, “Ah, this is the visit I was looking forward to!”

Sweetest old bastard alive ftw.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 22

Day 1

My arms are sore. The day prior, five friends and I flipped a giant tractor tire a mile. (It’s a workout created by my sister-wife. She dubs it “the enTIRE mile”.) Upshot is my forearms are Meredith Baxter Burny, and correcting Tulip on our walk is a chore. I decide that, instead of physical corrections, I’ll use mind control. I say, “Tulip!” real short and concentrate real hard on being the boss of her, and wonder of wonders, she drops back six inches letting the leash go slack.

I have to do a lot of mind control, probably about as often as I’d been doing tugs on her collar, but my forearms are saved.

Day 2

I spend most of the day crying. Emotional upheaval, probably not helped by the fact that I’m not sleeping enough. I’ve been walking the dogs between 9:00 and 10:00pm to beat the heat, but when I get home, I’m wound up and don’t go to bed until midnight. Tonight I skip the dog-walk so that I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. Lights out at 10:37pm.

My brain wakes me up at 4:15am. Stupid brain.

[My friend asks, “Aren’t you scared to walk that late at night?” Um, I’m walking 190 pounds of pit bull. Nope, not scared.]

Day 3

More mind control. I think it’s working. I have to choke up less on the leash when we go by the house with three big Rottweilers in the yard. At home, I look online at Rottweiler rescues. I need to stop; I have a problem.

Tulip has 120 Facebook friends. No adoption prospects.

Day 4

On our late night walk, the pack gets agitated. I look around to find a loose or stray dog (it’s too dark to see if it’s wearing tags) about 20 yards away. Redford lunges, and when he can’t get at the stray, he redirects on Violet and Tulip. Tulip snaps back. I’m able to separate the dogs and hustle away from the strange dog. People pooh-pooh pinch collars—they say they’re cruel or whatever—but those things are the only reason none of us has to go to the ER.

Day 5

I have scheduled a walk with the adoptive “father” (he’s only 22!) of Tucker, the boy dog that was confiscated with Tulip. In the pictures, Tucker and Tulip look alike, though he’s clearly mixed with something other than pit bull. It’s possible Tulip is his mom or sister. I’m hoping she remembers him and they have a grand ol’ time together.

We arrive at Duke’s east campus. Tucker walks up with his person. Tulip is excited. She tenses up. She sniffs at Tucker. He hesitates. She says not-nice things to him.

(sigh)

We walk anyway. It’s fine. But damn.

Day 6

I go on a tubing trip down the Dan River that lasts three hours longer than I expect. Tulip is in the crate for almost eleven hours. When I get home, she has jumped around in there and managed to slide it across the room, but she’s otherwise OK. I’m too tired to take the dogs for a walk.

Day 7

Tulip is CRAZY. Between the long stint in the crate and not being walked since Friday night, she has a lot of stored-up wiggles. She gets them out by running laps through the house and tossing her deer antler to herself and then chasing after it.

We go on an extra-long walk. I use a combination of physical corrections and mind control.

Tulip’s always real interested in whether I’m going to eat that.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 23