A Foster Failure

Let’s face it, making friends is difficult and seems to get more difficult with age. Children deserve a lot of credit for truly streamlining the friendship process: walk onto the playground, find a kid, show them your red Power Rangers toy, and you’re in. As an adult, this gets complicated by factors that suddenly seem to matter. We’re tired and anxious- do we really have it in us to risk it all on a coworker that seems like they may be a fun addition to our weekend hike? There is a risk-to-payoff assessment that we make every time we decide to engage with a new friend and dogs are no different.

When I was five, my family took in a boxer mix puppy whose mom had been hit by a car. Since we already had two other dogs, the plan was originally to raise her until she was old enough to safely be rehomed, however I became attached very quickly. I would sneak downstairs at night after everyone went to bed so that I could be with her, even though she was still too young to even walk properly. I would lay next to her, struggling to keep my heavy eyes open as I made up stories to tell her so she wouldn’t get lonely. After one too many times of my parents waking up in the morning to find me asleep on the floor by her crate, they knew they had no choice but to keep her. We named her Eleanor and she became the proud new member of our heard. Our other two dogs acted as her older brothers, teaching her everything from how to play with their toys to which tree was the appropriate one to use the restroom on. At the park, she ran beside her brothers as they chased all the other dogs. She was confident, social, and happy, and as her owner, I couldn’t have asked for more.

Unfortunately, this is not the dog that this story is about.

Several years later, both of her brothers died about a month apart from one another, and with them, Eleanor’s confidence. She was lonely at home and no longer had a desire to play the same games in the yard. One day I took her to the dog park in hopes she would feel better there, but what was once a poised and self-assured, lively dog was now timid and nervous. She hid behind me the whole time and even tried to snap at another dog. She began getting separation anxiety whenever I had to leave for school and would wait by the door for me to get home.

During this same time, my mom and I were regularly fostering pets for a local animal rescue organization. We had several litters of kittens and various dogs come through the house, all of which Eleanor would ignore. Some would try to get her to play but would usually give up once she growled at them. She was almost unrecognizable at this point and I was starting to wonder if she would ever recover from the loss of her brothers.

Then along came Tic-Tac.

We received a message one day about a four-year-old Great Dane mix who had been surrendered to the pound and was going to be put down later that afternoon, as he was deemed too aggressive for rehoming. While, we were not confident in how this would go over at home, we knew we had to try to save him, so we packed up a crate and went to pick him up. When we got to the pound, we were warned not to touch his face as he was prone to biting. After a short cautionary tale, we were lead to Tic-Tac, cowering in the corner of his cell. He was hardly identifiable as a Great Dane due to his malnourished physique. We were not able to get him into the crate and instead had to take this unknown, supposedly violent dog home using nothing but his leash. After a hastily assembled cardboard barrier to allow him privacy in the back seat, we set off for home, paying close attention to make sure he was secured.

To our surprise, as soon as we left the pound, his mood completely changed. He would poke his head over the barrier and desperately attempt to lick us. When we got home, we showed him to a spot in the laundry room where we assumed he would retire to a safe hiding spot, but we were stunned when he didn’t want to leave our side. What was even more shocking, when we gave him food later into the evening, he quickly ate all of it! He was so excited to be out of the pound, that all of the aggression and nervousness that he had before was gone!

It wasn’t just the people of the household that he was grateful towards either. He loved our senior rabbit, even though it was obvious that he didn’t understand what exactly he was. He would sit by his cage and patiently wait for him to hop over and wiggle his little nose through the bars at him. Tic-Tac would hold up his snout to meet his, but wouldn’t know how to proceed from there. Over time, our rabbit would get excited to see Tic-Tac and wait by the edge of his crate for him to come over. They would exchange their snout bump and simply exist together happily. In time, we let them meet without the crate but with close supervision, as we were worried about Tic-Tac trying to “play like a dog.” Never ceasing to surprise and impress, Tic-Tac politely laid down, tail wagging the whole time. Eventually our rabbit hopped up to him and laid down between his paws, where Tic-Tac gently started licking him, as if cleaning a puppy. This turned into an almost nightly routine.

As you can probably imagine, Eleanor did not have the same reaction to Tic-Tac being added to our family. At first, she wanted nothing to do with him, and as she did with all other dogs, would growl at him if he got too close. We tried to encourage him to stay away from her for his own safety but Tic-Tac, however, was determined to win her over. He would walk up to her, and get as close as she would let him and sit down. He would look at her and wag his tail while she glared at him from her corner of the yard. Days went by like this, and they would spend hours in the corner of the yard just looking at each other. After about a week I noticed that he was slowly moving closer and closer to her, and at the same time she was getting more and more tolerant of his presence, which was more than I could say about any of the other fosters that we had that came through.

Finally, one day Tic Tac finally made his move, he got a toy, brought it over to her, and laid it at her feet. He wagged his tail in anticipation, but to no avail, she took the toy for herself and went to go to the other side of the yard. Another week passed by like this; we would bring a toy, she would take it and leave. We started feeling bad for him, as he kept a routine of rejection every day, but he never gave up. After about two weeks of this, Eleanor finally took the toy and started running around the yard. Tic-Tac jumped up and began chasing her, being careful to leave a comfortable amount of space between her. For the first time in nearly two years, I watched Eleanor run around the yard with her tail wagging. From there, it was only another week before the two were playing tug-of-war and wrestling each other. Every single day I watched as they both became more confident than the last.

It should go without saying that we failed as foster parents- we adopted him after soon after. After a month of having Tic-Tac, it was hard to imagine the family without him. In the years that we had Tic-Tac, he raised five litters of foster kittens, four baby chicks, and helped to socialize four foster dogs who were once in the same place that he was. I never had to watch Eleanor cower in the corner of the yard again thanks to the patience and love of her new brother. So much of the fun of rescuing dogs is getting to know them and their unique personalities. In the case of Tic-Tac, we didn’t even know that he was exactly what we were missing.