A Day In the Life of a Foster

Life as a foster to a dog is not glamorous. Far from it, actually. You may get lucky with a nicely behaved dog, but it's rare in my experience. Most dogs that come through rescue networks have been dumped, neglected, not trained, not spayed or neutered, and lack social skills and indoor manners. All of that is challenging enough.

Don't get me wrong. Fostering is awesome and extraordinarily rewarding. To know that you saved a dog from being euthanized simply because you had a home and an open heart is a wonderful thing. But they come with things.

I work a regular 8-5 job (I've got to pay for these dogs somehow), but I hire a person to come visit and play with my dogs during the day. Leaving them alone that long isn't fair to them, or me. There are days that everything is cool in the morning. We get up, we do our routine to get out of the house, we crate our foster dog and off we go!

Coming home, on the other hand could go something like this:

I pull into the driveway and open the garage door. Immediately, the dogs (my two and the foster) start barking. I'm glad they are alert, but it does bug me sometimes. I enter the house and there's a smell. Ew, the smell. I walk over to let the foster dog out of his kennel and there it is. The dog, smeared in its own poop. And the crate and surrounding carpeting is covered in it as well. Then I notice the bedding this dog has been sitting on is shredded... and also covered in poop. Good lord.

I open the kennel and let the dog outside with my other two and come back to the mess. Where do I start??

After I put on a pair of latex gloves, I find a plastic bag and pick up what larger pieces of poop I can find in the mess and put them outside immediately. I gather all the bedding and put it right into the washing machine on hot... with bleach. It's the only way to sanitize completely. I take the bottom kennel tray outside and hose it off. The poop is caked on nicely so it's going to take more than my garden hose.

I find my vinegar solution, spray it and wipe it down three times before I'm satisfied that I got it all off. Then I hose it down once more. Just in case.

Back in the house, I moved the crate to pick up all the tiny pieces of shredded bedding and start vacuuming. Then, because some poop got onto the carpeting, I get out my carpet cleaner and went to work. Thank goodness the soap smells good.

Once the house is clean, I go outside to check on the dogs. (Side note: I have a completely fenced yard and they go out there to run and play without supervision often.) The dog who caused all the trouble was pretty messy and stunk like poop, so it was bath time - something this particular dog wasn't used to, but tolerated because he trusted me. This is how the bath went: rinse, try to escape, hold down, rinse more, add soap, lather up, try to escape, hold down, lather more, try to escape, hold down, rinse, try to escape, rinse more, try to escape, finally dry off the dog and he shakes it all onto me and the entire bathroom. Now I have a bathroom to clean. sigh

I let the dog out of the bathroom, but he's wound up. He runs around the house, exciting my other dogs and they run back and forth and bark, knocking over a lamp. Seriously?

I clean the bathroom, but only so much. By this time, it's already 7pm and I haven't even gotten the mail, emptied my lunch bag, or eaten dinner.

Finally, I finish in the bathroom, move the kennel bedding to the dryer and throw a frozen pizza into the oven. Honestly, I have no desire to cook anything at this point. This dog removed that idea from my head the instant I walked in the house.

Ten minutes later, I'm sitting down to eat with three dogs on the floor in front of me waiting, patiently, for something to fall or for me to offer it to them. They are totally well behaved in this situation. Just sitting there waiting. Quietly. It makes me smile knowing that I've done something right with them.

My last three bites go to each dog. They're small. Just enough to let them know they were good dogs and need rewards. They're thankful. I know this.

I clean up my dinner mess and finally sit down to relax a little. It's now 8:30pm and I'm tired. When I was at work earlier in the day, I figured I'd finish some projects when I got home, get my laundry done, do some freelance work, but the foster dog had something totally different in mind.

As I sit on the couch and browse channels, all three dogs come to the couch and curl up next to me. They all have to be touching me. And they each take a deep breath in their own time and close their eyes. Here, they are at peace. They are quiet, trusting, and content. This is when I am the most satisfied. I know that even when things are challenging, they all still show unconditional love.

People wonder why I don't keep our foster dogs. We have. We just don't keep every one. It's true that every day with a new foster is kind of like this. The first week or so is always difficult because the dog is in a totally new environment and needs time to adjust. As do we. But we love these dogs as if they've been with us forever. We take them in knowing that we've saved them from death and that they'll live out the rest of their years in a loving home, even if it's not ours. That's all we could ever want and it's always worth the smeared poop and everything. Honest.