Our First Foster Dog

At last, at last!  We were chosen to foster!

On November 22, we drove to the Phoenix airport to pick up Skywalker, a 3 year old male puppy mill rescue.  (I'll save the puppy mill rant for later but you should know that they are animal abuse.)

I had already twice devoured the Foster Home Handbook provided by CPCRN but still a bit nervous.  Both Paul and I were very excited to meet our new CP kid, Skywalker.  The freight elevator doors opened and we got a glimpse through the crate door of a  little black Cairn. A true Toto!

With paper work finally completed, we took the crate to a secluded and quiet corner of the airport and cautiously cracked the door.  Out came an alert head, ears pricked forward, eyes and nose moving furiously to take in everything.  He was so handsome!  And then he reached out and licked Foster Dad's hand.  Our decision to foster was immediately reaffirmed.

Per experienced-based policy, we could not remove Skywalker from his crate until we got home and were inside the house.  We topped off his water bowls and off to the truck we went for the 2.5 hour trip home.  Skywalker was perfect.  Not a sound, no crate soiling, no car sickness.  Just a very observant Cairn, taking in the sights and sounds of freedom.

Losing Newtie changed everything

On 7/27/09, my daring, reckless, very Cairn Newtie, my true Heart Dog, escaped out of the fence and was killed by a car right in front of my house on our dead end road.  It was right before his 3rd birthday.  My life was shattered.  I couldn't seem to recover.  My husband, Paul, wanted to immediately get a new puppy but that wasn't acceptable to me. Paul even found a puppy he really wanted, unfortunately not a CP kid or any kind of rescue, but another crazy little Cairn.  After several months, the puppy was still available, Paul still wanted him, and I was so lonely without Newt (remember, Parker is Paul's Heart Dog) the baby that I said yes. 

View Newt's memorial on CPCRN - be sure once you are on the memorial page to click his plaque for additional memories.

 
So My Shadow Boo Radley, now often known as Rad the Mad or Rocket Rad, joined us in September.  He helped my recovery so much but he also made Paul and me think more about how important dogs are in people's lives and how often dogs don't have the chance to be loved.  That was our turning point of stopping to think about ourselves when it came to fostering a dog for CPCRN.  What was fear of our being hurt when rescue dogs are in so much need and often have been hurt terribly themselves, often over many years?  That did it.  The application to be a Foster Home for Col Potter was immediately sent off.  CPCRN depends on very busy volunteers and is also known for its due diligence, so even though we had adopted twice from CP, we still had to be "vetted."   We passed and we waited.  Now we were so eager to have a foster dog that I started begging for one!  The wise people at CPCRN knew what they were doing though.

Getting to know Col Potter Cairn Rescue Network

In May of 2006, I adopted a Col Potter rescue dog after my first Cairn died of heart failure at the age of 22.  The Sainted Mr. Riley was sorely missed and I knew another Cairn was destined to enter my life.  I was determined to have another rescue Cairn and of course turned to the internet to help me locate that dog who was waiting patiently for me.

Once I found Col Potter Cairn Rescue Network, my application to adopt from this was sent in almost immediately.  I then spent hours poring over the "available dogs" on their website wondering which Cairn terrier I would come to love. Fortunately, CPCRN has matchmakers who know details of the dogs and learn what you are looking for and make suggestions.  Actually, I think I got only one suggestion, Tillie.  Tillie was a bit older at 7 years, a Cairn mix, diabetic, and developing cataracts.  She wasn't high on potential adopters wish lists and had been in a foster home for over a year.   Tillie's exceptional foster mother quickly convinced me that I could easily handle the diabetes and that Tillie was a doll.  I have a lot of experience with animal diabetes and my heart breaks knowing a diabetes diagnosis makes an animal very difficult to place in a forever home.  Paul and I discussed it and quickly decided that Tillie needed us.  She came to us a short time later, was renamed Parker, and quickly was nicknamed Miss Perfect Parker.

Parker was a bit withdrawn but had an endearing habit of taking 3 of her stuffed animals into the middle of the floor and attempting to nurse them.  Her foster mom assured me that Parker loved puppies and convinced us that we should get Parker a puppy.  Approximately one week after Parker came to us, she and Paul were absolutely mutually smitten, so if someone said Parker needed something, Paul made sure Parker got it.  And where else would we get our next Cairn?  Col Potter, of course.

  In November 2006, I drove to Washington state from Colorado and, in the middle of a snowstorm, my arms were filled with an enormous 3-month-old Cairn crowned by an even more enormous head.  Sir Isaac Newton joined the crew.

At that time, I had spent pretty much every day of the previous 7 months surfing the CPCRN website and becoming very aware of the desperate situation with puppy mills and how much CPCRN needed volunteers.  We didn't want another Cairn and the sad stories we read on Col Potter made us adamantly refuse to foster rescues, afraid we would not be able to withstand the heartbreak.  But I needed to help, so I signed up to help with the web site. Other than donations, that is all I have done for Col Potter in the last 3 years. 

Then the unexpected happened, as it always does in life.

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All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good people to do nothing. 
-Edmund Burke