Foster Dog #2 - Baby

A few days after Nico went to his new home, we signed-up for our second foster dog.  I picked "Baby" up at SeaTac at 9 pm on a Monday night.  She came from the Kauai Humane Society, apparently she was a little too timid for the shelter environment.  Little did we know that she was also too timid for the house with not-so-noisy kids too. 

She spent over a week hiding in her crate as much as possible.

After over a week I was finally able to pick her up.

After a few weeks of her running from everyone or snapping at us whenever we came close to her, I had a session with one for the DGS trainers and things got better, at least for me, she never did warm to Keith.  

Parker was terrified of her the whole time, I think this is the closest he ever got to Baby, and it's only because Cecily is the buffer between them.

Amazingly, after having Baby for for 8 weeks, we still found someone who wanted to adopt her.

I think that Baby was an exceptionally difficult case, but either way, I don't think we'll be fostering again.  Actually, at this point, we're not really sure we even want a dog at all.  We'll see.

We got a dog!

We've signed up to be dog fosters in the hopes that we'll eventually find the right dog for our family.

Our first dog was Nicholas, he came from a shelter in San Bernadino in California.  We called him Nico, since Nicholas was a lot of name for such a tiny dog.

For the first few days, you have to let the dog decompress, so he spent most of his time in the crate.  This is easier said than done with two (or three) very excited children.

Cecily was determined to make friends with Nico, fortunately, he was SUPER mellow and was willing to go along with pretty much whatever.

After a few days, we realized that Nico had an infection, so he had to go to the vet and spent the next week wearing the cone of shame.  He was not such a fan, but it did help him heal.

Cecily is determined to be Nico's favorite, so she created a "puppy paradise" in her bedroom.

He perked up a lot once the infection was cleared up and we could take the cone off.

He liked to help me with my Pilates.

Saying goodbye...

Amazingly, Nico ended up going home with some friends of ours from Church.  We knew from the beginning that Nico wouldn't be our forever dog, but it did make it a lot easier to say goodbye when we knew the family taking him.  They've re-named him Jasper, and it's been fun getting photos of how happy he is with the Crews family.

All told, we had Nico for just under three weeks.  Except for all the vet visits, he really was the perfect intro-dog for fostering.