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Friday, March 3, 2006

What Every Dog Deserves...A Happy Ending

I was lucky enough to see the end result of my fostering yesterday. Last Friday I watched Star drive off with another volunteer to go to her potential new forever home and yesterday Star officially became a member of her new family. To see Star in her new home was wonderful. She was relaxed and at home. I could tell she recognized me in the way she greeted me tail wags and kisses, but at the same time I knew she was home the way she would check me out and then check in with her mom. It was a wonderful feeling to see her at her best.



I think a part of me will always miss Star, but a bigger part will always be grateful that her new forever mom opened her heart and home to a beautiful dog who was almost labeled troubled. Star's journey to her forever home is the perfect example of finding the right dog for each potential adopter's home whether it's a Greyhound or any other breed.



We've all fallen in love with the look of a dog at our local shelter, the rescue group web sites and on Petfinder, but what we all need to remember is while that dog is beautiful it may not be the right match for our families and it's important to listen to the dogs foster homes as well as the volunteers doing home visits. It's also crucial for the foster volunteers to relay important information about each dog so the placement volunteers are able to make the right matches. It's not a good idea to choose based on looks for a potential owner and it's never in the rescues or dogs best interest to place them in a home just because the dog has taken a while to place or because a good application has come to the rescues attention.



I know from experience, I adopted Josie my Beagle/Basset mix without knowing much about either breed. While she's a wonderful dog, she's a ton of work and difficult to train. But I fell in love with her photo and fell deeper in love when I met her. Would I do things differently knowing what I know now, yes but only because knowledge is power, but a human's knowledge does not always overcome the look a dog like Josie gives when they're looking for a home. Sometimes even with all the difficulties you end up with a match made and in Josie's case she's lucky she's cute and loyal. With Star her match was not my family and even though it was difficult I followed my head and not my heart and yesterday I saw the outcome every dog deserves regardless of breed.



Until next time, Woof, Woof and a Roo.



1 comment:

  1. i enjoyed reading about star.
    that match thing... can be tricky. i had to test out a greyt with a woman whose dog was constantly in piercing shriek mode. happy, but a wee too vocal about it. scared the daylights out of the greyt i was fostering. she really wanted Charlie (mine) because he was fawn. i was pretty sure i convinced her that Charlie was not the dog for her and convinced her to try another one that wasn't her ideal colour, but was mellow and seemed to mellow out other dogs. now her dog is calm and happy, CeeJay the greyt is in heaven and she's learned that you can't just pick a colour or the dog from the web page.
    i'll be checking back more often. hard to find other fosters. -kt

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