I’ve mentioned a bunch of times that I have helped find homes for a number of foster dogs, and helped friends who were looking for a certain type of dog to find one who fits into their family perfectly. As far as I know, all the dogs I’ve placed into homes continue to live happily in those homes – with one exception.

A couple of months ago – on the same trip to my local shelter when I picked up my recent litter of foster puppies – I saw the cutest little dog in the adoption ward. He looked like a miniature Border Collie, or a Sheltie-mix, and was perhaps six or seven months old. He had been picked up as a stray and had been in the shelter for about three weeks. He was a little shy with people at first, but once you had him in your lap (he weighed only about 20 pounds) he would give his heart right over to you (and yours to him). So sweet, so sharp, so cute. I took a little video of him dancing for attention in his kennel and sent it to a friend who had been looking for either a Border Collie (she lives on a ranch 20 miles from the closest town in the mountains) or a nice little “couch dog.” This dog was like a perfect combination of her separate visions for her next dog or dogs.

She loved the video, and wanted the dog. The next day I picked up the little guy so I could foster him for a week in advance of his neuter surgery, so I could start his training and get to know him well enough to offer phone support for further training. My senior citizen friend has no income besides Social Security, so I paid the adoption fee.  At the end of the week, he knew a few basic cues, how to behave in the house, not to chase the cat or chickens, and that sleeping in crates (with your own private stash of bones and toys) is pretty cool. On a day that I had someone else to feed the litter of foster puppies, I put the little guy in my car and drove the 80 miles or so to my friend’s house.

My friend loved the dog, and the dog loved her, and it seemed like he was fitting right in. The ranch cats schooled him (“Chase us, will you? Well, we will chase you right back, you ignorant puppy!”), he learned not to enter the horse pasture unattended (he got chased out of there, too), and while alarmed at first when my friend shouted during football games, he quickly saw that excitement as a fun opportunity to bark and shout, too. My friend joked that she was going to call him “Velcro,” because he stayed glued to her side as she went slowly about her chores, feeding the chickens and the horses and checking the water troughs. Until one afternoon when he vanished. 

My friend didn’t see him go. She says he was there one minute and the next – poof.

She says she called and called, and drove up and down her dirt road calling. She let all her friends and neighbors (such as they are, miles apart) know she was looking for a little Sheltie-looking dog. He was wearing one of my collars and tags, and he is microchipped. But no one reported seeing him. She decided a couple days later that coyotes must have gotten him.

I was on deadline with the last issue of WDJ while this was happening. If I could have, I would have driven immediately over and spent days walking those dirt roads and calling for him. As it was, four days later, after the issue was sent to the printer, I drove over and put up “lost dog” signs for miles around. There has been no sign of him nor word about him.

I know this happens – obviously, or the shelters wouldn’t be full of stray dogs. Heck, he came into the shelter as a stray, picked up by county animal control! But my county is more populous than my friend’s; where she lives, the odds of someone seeing him and calling animal control are abysmal. And she’s right; out where she lives, the coyotes probably did get him.

Every time I see his picture – I took a bunch while I had him, he was so darn cute – it makes me feel so sad. I can’t bear the thought of him running through the woods, lost. Despite all the fun I had fostering (and placing) the puppies, I’m kind of burned out on fostering for a while. I miss that little guy like he was my own dog.

I could not WAIT for them to go to their forever homes, and the last one went home on Saturday… and now I miss them unbearably – their relentless exploring and fooling around, tireless curiosity, darling miniature barks and howls and growls,

and cheerful learning during our many-times-a-day-for-just-one-minute training sessions. It didn’t help that I let the last puppy sleep with me in my bed, the last two nights I had him.

(That’s what happens when you leave on business trips, Mr. Husband!) I hope his new owner allows him to sleep on the bed; he’s the snuggliest puppy I’ve ever known.

Otto is getting a lot more kisses, however, so he’s quite happy.

I know that all of my blog posts have been about puppies or puppy care or puppy food lately. That’s because I’ve been overrun with puppies since September 10th, when I agreed to foster six too-young puppies that were brought into my local shelter. Taking care of them has been a challenge, because neither my house nor my office was really set up for puppy care (though they are now), and because if you want to raise them right, puppy care and training takes a lot of time and energy. I haven’t spent so much time with so many puppies since I was a little kid; my parents were animal lovers, but they also were also completely inexperienced with and ignorant about the needs of animals and responsible animal care and control, and so we were forever looking for homes for litter after litter of “accidental” puppies.  But despite the investment of time – and money! – I spent on my foster pups, overall it was a great experience, one that underscored quite a few things I’ve learned over the years that I’ve edited Whole Dog Journal. Allow me to share some of the bullet points with you.

• Good food makes a huge difference. When I got the puppies, they were in rough shape. They had big, round bellies – full of worms. Their coats were rough and aside from the bellies, their body condition was poor. I started them out on really good quality canned food, to which I added puppy formula (milk replacer). When they all developed the inevitable respiratory infections that pretty much all puppies at the shelter come down with, and were started on antibiotics, I added a goat-milk-based probiotic/digestive enzyme supplement (Pro Bloom made by The Honest Kitchen) to their daily regimen. That helped them handle the antibiotics and their poop went from goopy, disgusting messes to nice firm poops within a few days. When they were about 8 weeks old, I started offering them a quality kibble, and left some in their bowl to snack on between the canned-food meals. Of course, the deworming helped, but I think the top-quality food really helped improve their health and coat quality.

(It also cost a small fortune. The canned food I fed them cost $3 a can; they were eating 3-4 cans a day. The Pro Bloom is $24 for 16 packets, and I fed them one packet a day for about a month.)

• Good “management” gear makes everything easier. I can’t imagine raising puppies without baby gates, exercise pens, and crates to keep them out of stuff they shouldn’t get in and safely enclosed where you want them. I bought one exercise pen on the day I brought the puppies home and it was so helpful I bought another within the week, so I had two safe environments to keep them in. That way, I could release them from one pen and feed them in a clean pen; I’d clean the first pen while they ate, then take them outside to potty and put them back into the first pen.

• Socialization is critical to raising a well-adjusted dog. These pups were handled by everyone I knew who wanted to meet them. My son and his (young men) friends played with them endlessly. My two-year-old grandson romped NEAR them (but didn’t actually enjoy being mobbed by them, and I was worried about his stepping on one, so they played on opposite sides of the x-pen). My girlfriends stopped by to visit a lot more than usual. A friend brought over her elderly aunt, who used to raise German Shepherd Dogs but now has dementia. She spoke to them in German and had to be physically prevented from bringing one home. I showed everyone how to ask them to sit, and they were reinforced with treats, praise, petting, and attention. Because they had such frequent, varied, and uniformly enjoyable (not stressful) experiences, they readily approached any human confidently, happily, and without going “over the top” with frantic energy.

• It’s never too early for training. From the beginning, when the pups were just tiny  (they were estimated to be about 4 ½ weeks old when I got them), I rewarded any puppy any time I saw him sitting. I’d bend down and rub him, feed him a little treat (I used tiny cubes of Natural Balance roll or bits of cooked chicken when I had recently made some), or toss him a toy. I’d make eye contact and say “You’re such a good boy!” As a result, by the time they were six weeks old, I could get the entire group to sit quietly and watch me on cue – a feat that did not go unnoticed on the occasions when I took them back to the shelter for vaccinations (and continued deworming – boy, were they full of worms). The veterinary technician who administers most of the healthcare wasn’t surprised by their behavior on these occasions (I have also taught the shelter volunteers how to teach the shelter wards how to sit politely in front of their kennel doors) but she was impressed by the six little guys lined up on the floor of her exam room, waiting their turns for shots (and treats). On the day I brought them to the shelter for neuter surgery, immediately prior to their being made available for adoption, even the shelter director noticed how quietly and calmly they were in the recovery room cages before and after their surgeries; all the rest of the puppies who were being spayed or neutered that day cried and whined and pooped and whirled in the poop in their cages. But “my” pups were used to being crated at night and intermittently for short periods during the day, and were calm (and kept their cages clean).

All of the puppies got adopted very quickly. I agreed to hold one for 10 days past the adoption date because the adopter was going on vacation the day after she met the puppies (a friend heard she was considering getting another dog and brought her to my house), and one of the others for 20 days past the adoption because the adopter, a lovely young woman, was still in escrow on her first home. She has since closed and is moving in and will pick up her puppy this coming weekend, when everything is in place to keep him well-managed. She’s come by to visit with him and is doing a great job of preparing for his care and training. It’s been fun spending time with him on an only-puppy basis – it really sped up his training and good manners to be around only my well-behaved adult dogs this past week, instead of spending 24/7 with another rowdy puppy. I admit I will miss him (and all the puppies), but boy, oh boy, am I looking forward to spending time with ONLY my adult dogs.

You know those stories of how Twinkies can last forever? I kind of want to run my own experiment after something I witnessed recently.

There is a cute cat who lives somewhere in my neighborhood who comes over to beg for food from time to time. For months last year, I thought she had been abandoned; I asked all my neighbors if they knew were she belonged and no one did. (I even took her in to have her spayed and it turned out that she had a spay scar, so I brought her back to the neighborhood, but with her tummy shaved.) Eventually, I found her owner, who cheerfully told me that so many people feed the cat, that she doesn’t have to. Oy!

At any rate, the cat had gone missing. I haven’t seen her in at least six months, and I thought the odds were good that the owners had moved or she had gotten killed. And then suddenly, there she was again, on my front porch, begging for food.

Well, I had JUST finished our annual canned dog food review (which appears in the November issue) and there are pouches and tubs and cans of canned dog food all over my office. I grabbed one of the “does not meet our standards” foods, one that was packed in a plastic tub, popped the top off, and put it on the porch. I patted the cat and went back to work.

About six hours later, I was taking the trash out and saw the plastic tub. First odd thing: the cat hadn’t eaten a single bite of the food. Second odd thing: there wasn’t a single fly on the food.

Now, I’ve been fostering six puppies, and I live in northern California, where we’ve been having a terrible drought. The flies have been NO JOKE this year. And it’s gotten so that I can locate any pile of puppy or dog poo in the backyard by the buzzing of flies, which descend within seconds of the poop’s deposit. When I feed the puppies a plate full of (good) canned food, if they don’t finish it, the food is covered with flies within minutes. How there could be no flies on this food six hours later was beyond me.

So I tried a little experiment: At the puppies’ next mealtime, I prepared their (good) food on a plate, and put the plate next to the tub of icky food. I went in the house to get a camera, and went back out. The results?

Within two minutes, there were about 10 flies on the puppy food, and two flies on the tub of poor-quality food. And I think the ones on the icky food were just confused by the proximity of the good food. It’s as if even FLIES didn’t recognize it as actual food!!

Now I want to run further experiments, similar to those people who put a Twinkie away in a cupboard and see how long it will look edible, with no visible mold or rot. Generally, canned foods do not contain preservatives, but there is something in there that seems to repel flies. When I took the good food away, the low-quality food again drew no flies – the first time in my life I’ve been grossed out by the LACK of flies.