koalathebear

Our dogs go to a dog park every week for a nice off-leash romp together. I take them one at a time to a nearby oval for some one-on-one off-leash time every now and then.

I still don't think it's necessary to get a puppy at 7-8 weeks or else. Puppies aren't a blank canvass. They come with certain predispositions. For me it's what you do with them after you get them and during the time you have them that matters. I've heard many people tell me that they have a hand shy dog that has never been beaten in its life etc :p

I was initially scared by the horror stories, too and thought 8 weeks was ideal and anything older was bad ... Hoover came from Working Kelpie Council breeder at 3+ months - had never been off the property or in a car before then, never met a vacuum cleaner/washing machine/electric slippers etc - never been in the house actually but is our most bomb proof of our dogs and completely unfazed by anything he encounters. Socialisation is very important and I work very hard at socialising all of our foster dogs but I don't think it necessarily means Bad Dog if it doesn't happen. Lots of dogs that come through rescue were probably very unsocialised prior to coming into care and seem to be able to come good - we're just very careful about ensuring that we do a lot of careful exposure and socialisation with the dogs without overwhelming them. You can never socialise to all things though ... one of the dogs we rehomed went to a home with alpacas and it wasn't possible for us to have predicted that :laugh: Fortunately the owners put in the hard work of training him around alpacas. Similarly, I have seen some extremely well-bred dogs that have been very carefully socialised by experienced dog owners yet still end up being fear aggressive. There's also a genetic component in there, too and also the wild care that these are animals not machines.

Almost forgiven for the indignity of the bucket No idea why but Juniper was really scared of cars when she first came into care. She'd try to run away - run anywhere really - and flatten herself on the ground. My husband had to pick her up every single time to put her in the car. One time she leapt off the stairs when she knew we were heading towards the car. We caught her in time otherwise she probably would have hanged herself Oddly enough once in the car she was a good traveller - was just terrified of the car itself. She's doing really well now. Here's a short clip from this morning.

DD - I've been a crazy dog lady for so long it actually didn't occur to me that it was something to be offended about being called Given the number of dogs we frequently have running around the house (temp care/foster care etc), the line between foster carer and animal hoarder is pretty fine... :)

:laugh: I am sure that those rescuers still exist but for the most part, most foster carers I know tend to have only 1-2 dogs in addition to their own resident dogs. Partly in deference to local dog ownership laws but also because other halves can get a bit cranky if you have too many foster dogs :laugh: Our group is lucky enough that we have carers and volunteers in most states and territories in Australia. In remoter areas, we might rely on the friend/family member of a foster carer. The yard checker is given the criteria by which to assess the yard and we don't demand access to the house or anything like that. The yard checks you see being requested on here are generally for groups who may not have coverage in certain areas where applicants live and I'm assuming that the people who reply are with other rescue groups and are known to each other. For the most part a yard check is common sense about the safety of a dog but sometimes it's only a fresh pair of unbiased eyes that can see a yard for its potential hazards and problems. I've never failed anyone but I have seen yard checks failed because of rusty abandoned cars with jagged edges, rubbish that has sharp edges, overly low fences where the owner can't boost them higher. I think so. As with all things, there are good rescues and bad rescues, good carers and bad carers so it's about finding the right fit for you. I sometimes receive applications for doggies before they are ready to adopt and I tell the applicants that and the genuine ones are always willing to wait until I feel as though the dog is ready and they follow the dog's progress religiously on the blog. In one instance, the dog had a sleepover at their place one weekend and then came back to us for further training - this was in addition to the two week trial. I've been lucky with my dogs but I have seen how heartbreaking it is for a carer to find out that a former foster dog has ended up at the pound even though we have a clause in our adoption contracts that gives the rescue a right to be offered the dog first if the adopters don't want it anymore. I am always afraid that people will be deterred by the fact that after the trial they will not get a refund if they return a dog so I always personally guarantee to refund the adoption fee if they will give the dog back to me. So far no one has taken me up on it but the offer is there.

I totally agree with you, persephone Why do owners think their dogs need to play? There is no forcing. At our dog park, our dogs like to run around with other dogs. Other dogs go there and chase a ball. Other dogs just chill out in the sun. Some people bring their elderly or anti-social dogs and just walk in laps around the park with the dogs (it's huge). They do about 4 laps and then leave without interacting with our dogs and our dogs leave them alone.

I find that sort of behaviour quite weird. We watch our dogs like hawks when we're at the dog park - but I've seen people dump their dog and then sit in a corner on the phone/texting/chatting with friends and not even looking at their dogs. One time, a guy dumped his pit bull in the park and went outside to chat to a mate. The dog was fine, but it was such a risky and strange thing to do. I've seen people leave their small children unattended to while they wandered off to do various things. Our dogs are friendly around children but the parents didn't know that! We used to get the same people coming through at the same time, these days not so much but there are a lot of familiar faces and dogs and as for all things dog-related, it's a matter of being vigiliant. Our dogs are happy to play with one another - often the park is deserted and they will simply play amongst themselves. They also really enjoy playing with other dogs though. Sometimes owners get really happy because they say after romping with our three, their dog will be nice and tired for the day :laugh:

Simply Grand - I'm really sorry to hear about Saxon. Poor little guy - I hope he's all right and not overly traumatised by the experience. It might end up being a parody of the other thread but I suspect it will just turn into one of the umpteen Dog Park = Evil threads :laugh: I'm one of the very few on DOL who enjoys going to the dog park with our dogs. We've been taking our dogs every week for years and never had any problems. There are certain parks we do not go to for different reasons - usually owner reasons rather than dog-reasons but we like the park in Casey on a Sunday morning and have never had any incidents. We have our three dogs between the two of us (husband and me). We don't stay if there are more than 6-8 dogs and we put our dogs on leash when new dogs come in and size up every new dog that comes in quite carefully as we decide if we're going to stay or leave. My dogs have played with all number of bull breed mixes, including pit bulls, GSDs, other working breeds, whippets, oodles, GSPs, setters, labs, GRs, malamutes, huskies, pugs, jugs and small white fluffies and so on ... Here's Hoover and our foster dog Juniper earlier this week running with a fluffy at the dog park. We did suggest that the owner might want to take her dog into the small dog pen as our Kelpies do sometimes like to herd the fluffies, but she insisted that he liked running with the bigger dogs and as you can see they were fine together - he just couldn't keep up with the Kelpies :laugh: Bad luck can happen anywhere and the only two times any of my dogs has ever been attacked was during an agility class - once by a Ridgeback and once by a Border Collie. I'm more nervous encountering off-lead dogs on walks than I am at the dog park because at the dog park, we are prepared and just leave if we don't like how a dog is behaving. If I'm out on a walk, all I can do is change direction and hope the offlead dog doesn't chase after us. ETA. I hadn't seen this the first time: Our dogs are fine being walked. Each one takes turns at being Canine Runner 5 when I am doing Zombies, Run and they have all learned to walk on a loose leash. The only times when they can go nuts and run around like crazies is at the beach or at the dog park. We generally keep them on leash at other times although if I have one dog with me, I'll sometimes let them have a little bit of controlled off leash time at the local ovals.

I have, tdierikx - a cuddle and a kiss from her Auntie T :) We let her sleep on the bed last night so that we could take the bucket off for bedtime - meant we could monitor that she wasn't licking the stitches. The bucket is so uncomfortable. Danny's Darling - haha, I felt guilty! As you say, we waited until she was more settled and feeling comfortable before getting her desexed. I have to say she bounced back really well and was much more perky and lively after it than Hoover. He really doesn't respond to anaesthesia very well so is usually very groggy. We haven't had a girl dog desexed before so are a bit paranoid. They say 10 days with only on-leash exercise and no exertion - problem is she is very lively and wanting to run and jump. She has internal dissolvable stitches so I am being very strict about not letting her run around at least for the first few days because I have a horrible visions of her pulling things open.

I just use Windows Movie Maker and drag and drop photos and video taken with my phone and my little point and shoot camera over. It's not time consuming at all. Sometimes foster carers only give me a tiny bit of video to work with but you slow it down and make it last. It does require a little bit of time, but so does foster caring so I see my role of a foster carer as being to do as much as I can to maximise my fosters dogs' chances of getting the perfect home.

I've had a few dogs like that. We open both doors of the crate and one of us stands at one entrance with a treat to lure the dog through the crate i.e. so he can't just stretch his head in to get the treat. Then we praise and reward like crazy once the dog is inside even briefly :laugh:

It's wonderful and the dogs LOVE it. We've been going for years - we go when it's not crowded and the dogs and the people are all friendly. We only bring fosters once they've settled a bit. We haven't been after rain though :laugh: Someone is feeling a little wretched today but someone shouldn't be licking her desexing stitches ... Just can't get comfy!

oops double post

This is the music video I was asked to make for a dog named Blossom, a large brindle crossbreed who was in care with her foster carer for 6-8 months She was adopted about a week after the video. Sorry it's a bit crap but it was one of my earlier efforts. That being said, that was in the days when petrescue let you upload videos and not just link to them so profiles with a video had a movie icon next to them which meant you could get more attention ... But the videos still help hugely and a lot of the people who adopt my doggies say that they like them. Some of the other videos are here. The ones for my own fosters are usually longer and more detailed. I also put video up of their obedience - all commands and tricks they know because that always interests people, too. Being able to 'see' what the dog is like and can do seems to be quite persuasive. Earlier this year, I was fostering two puppies and the more 'classic' looking dog (black and white BC-esque) received WAY more hits on PR whereas her equally wonderful sister Smudge, got way less. Here's . She eventually found a wonderful home (with a DOLer actually :) but there was a while when there was no interest in her because she was a Black Dog :pI used to write fairly long profiles, too - thinking that people wanted to know as much as possible about a dog. I've learned that the deters a lot of people so these days I keep the profile itself quite short but I have a link to my foster dog blog. I find that people who are genuinely interested in a dog WILL want to read everything and monitor the blog quite closely for photos/videos/updates but it means that the profile itself doesn't have large tracts of text which some people find daunting :p We've had a few dogs who have been in care for AGES who have finally found their perfect forever homes and it's amazing to see. I often feel like they were just waiting for just the right home to come along.

Juniper's doing so well. She's sleeping quietly in the dog bed next to me without being tethered. Gone is the restless pacing. When I get up, she might get up to check what I'm doing but she'll return to her bed. Off Switch pretty much activated! :) She was well-behaved at the cafe at breakfast this morning :) She ended up on the day bed when Elbie wasn't looking She is getting good at being sent to her crate or her dog bed. She gets desexed tomorrow which makes me feel horrible for her. It's why we've always stuck to boy dogs before ... the desexing is less traumatic. The vet recommends 10 days of no strenuous exercise. So we took her to the dog park today with Hoover so she could get a really good run in before the bed rest. She had a total blast.

People always say go with the opposite sex to what you have but by the time you get to the third dog, that gets a bit tricky :laugh:

We picked this dog up from the pound yesterday and delivered him to Wagga into foster care. This 6 week old puppy was found abandoned by the side of the road, dehydrated, emaciated and covered in fleas. The ranger's kids named him Matt Damon and nursed him back. He has been renamed Hamish. :laugh: He is doing well in foster care :)

Alas the trial failed She wasn't as active as they had hoped and didn't seem to take to the heat in NT very well Some photos of Juniper. She's doing well. Here she is unimpressed with being crated while Dodge was at dog school and Elbie and Hoover got to go to the dog park Juniper has finally learned to sit and drop. It hasn't been easy because she runs away from you if you are standing and it's very hard to lure a sit when you're crouched down. Eventually I put her on a leash so she couldn't run and then lured the sit and drop. Then I got rid of the leash and she still sits and drops. As you would expect, she now offers up the sit whenever she can in the hope of treats :) It's a better position though. The 'stand' for her was like Dodge - made for an easy get away so the sit means that she's less likely to bolt. She's also doing her well according to my list of 'mandatory' behaviours that fosters must leave with before getting adopted out :)

We have three male dogs in this house all desexed with no issue. If i had a female dog, I'd probably be going with a male though for a second dog. It can also be very breed specific and also specific to the individual dogs. A lot of people seem to have same gendered working dogs together without any problems.

Plan B I think your passion is admirable but as I've mentioned, even though almost all of my fosters are pound dogs, I wouldn't have taken them on without the foster support network and for me, if I'm going to recommend an option to people - it's one where they will have maximum support and recourse given that they are going to be the one living with the consequences of their decision. They're not going to get that sort of support from a pound. They won't even get it from all rescues and breeders - for me it's about recommending someone they can trust will be there to help them out if things go pear-shaped. I'm not saying a breeder is necessarily better than a pound - it has to be a good breeder. Despite what people say on DOL, I HAVE seen well-bred, pedigree show dogs from breeders end up in rescue .... So I'd be recommending a good breeder that you can trust. Even with my own rescue, I'd be recommending that people get a dog from a foster carer they trust and who is willing to offer post-adoption support. ETA: Parvo is not that easy to handle. We did a very careful quarantine at our house - best we could manage in the absence of a proper quarantine - but nothing is perfect, so even though we only kept the pups on bleachable surfaces and then bleached the hell out of everything afterwards, we still won't be taking on any unvaccinated dogs until after 12 months has expired. One of the things my rescue is doing is that we are vaccinating dogs at time of save in the pound so that the vaccinations have time to kick in before they get into the homes of carers given that there's almost always a delay before transport can be arranged - that delay can be used to allow vaccinations to take effect.

There are certain legal liabilities that even if you get people to sign a waiver the length of your arm wouldn't be enough to get you there. Then there's trial by media - can you imagine the blow-back a pound would get if it knowingly adopted out a child-unfriendly dog to a family with children. You'd never hear the end of it. With the rescue I'm with, we focus on working breeds so for us it's never about certain breeds not being suitable for children. We will specify in the profile if the dog is large/rough so might knock over young children. We will expressly state if a dog is not good with children i.e. does not like kids/nips at them and we will not place a chid-unfriendly dog into a home with small kids. We suggest another dog and almost everyone is happy to go with an alternate recommendation.

I can totally understand where you're coming from. We had two dogs of our own when we started fostering and felt a bit weird when the rescue wanted to do a yard check of our house. I would have been quite offended if we had been rejected, I'm sure. I always feel a bit weird when I do yard checks - I feel like I am being intrusive but I've found that for all of the genuine applicants, they are more than happy to show me around - showing me more than I need to see to be honest :laugh: Happy to answer any questions and also happy to take any suggestions if I tell them that this section of the fence is too low or if I ask them what do they intend to do if the dog decides it wants to landscape their beautiful yard and garden. I think that they understand that many of the dogs we rehome have had crappy lives previously and we are that dog's only advocate and no one will be looking out for that dog's interests at that time except us. So while I am extremely conscious and sensitive of the owner's experience/pride etc - the dog's welfare is first and foremost because once the dog is out of its trial period, it is out of my hands and I no longer have any way of assisting that dog. The applicant might be experienced and their resident dogs might be fine, but it's possible that the new dog has the ability to make its way out of a yard and the fence height and type of fence is always important to us and the fencing requirements vary depending on the dog. It's sad that you feel that way. I think it's quite responsible of the pound to be labelling the dogs depending on what sorts of dogs they are. For our rescue, for dogs that are child-unfriendly, we would never rehome them to a family with small children. If a dog was dog-unfriendly, we would not rehome to a home with other dogs. Even if the owner was very experienced i.e. had prior dog experience. The only exception would be for someone who was an experienced behaviourist/trainer who was aware of the training challenges and wanted to take them on. Just having owned a lot of dogs previously doesn't meant that someone is necessarily equipped to deal with behavioural issues. Can you imagine the liability a rescue would attract if they rehomed a child-unfriendly dog to a home with small children even if the owner stated that he/she could handle it? It's just not worth the risk given that there are plenty of other more suitable dogs out there. I am extremely picky about the homes that my foster dogs go to and don't believe that just a 'good' home is good enough because it's better than the pound/being put to sleep. I put a huge amount of effort into my foster dogs - money, emotion and time. The parvo puppies we had cost us $5,000 out of our own pocket. We crate train them, house-train them, teach them meal time manners, basic obedience, how to chill out at home and also how to do basic tricks. I'm really happy with all of the homes our dogs have gone to and the owners still keep in touch and were totally happy to answer my many questions and satisfy my various demands :laugh: I hope you find the right dog you're looking for and I hope that you can have a little bit of an understanding about the huge investment that foster carers put into the dogs they foster. It's almost never easy to give up a dog that you've nursed through sickness or trained through its behavioural issues. :)

Danny's Darling, I meant to tell you - 'Little' Sparky is on trial adoption right now in the Northern Territory of all places!! :laugh:

Still runs away from us when we approach her so we're still working with that. Also HATES going to the car and does that whole - I'm in a drop and I'm not going to move thing. Baby steps ... She is gorgeous though. Any new photos of Smudgie for me to see??? :)