It’s seven weeks since Barry was dropped off at our house for us to foster until we and Coco’s Heart Dog Rescue could find a forever-home for him. As I may have mentioned, this was to be my husband, Scott’s, project. My only involvement was to take Barry out first thing in the morning since I get up much earlier than Scott does. The rest of the care and maintenance were to be Scott’s responsibilities.
Scott has long-time ongoing back and neck pain issues. Those issues have gotten progressively worse over the 8-years we have been together. It is now at a point that something more aggressive needs to be done for him to experience any level of quality of life without the severe pain. The pain severity increased shortly after Barry came to us. You can see a shift in my involvement is about to happen.
Barry was 4-month’s old when we start his care. He’d just had heart surgery but you would never know that from how active and puppy-ish he was. He had been in an apartment situation in a St. Paul mid-rise apartment building. Taking Barry out to do his business meant a ride in the elevator several times a day since he was in that situation from birth. It was easier for that foster parent to cover the apartment with pee pads and let Barry just do his business in the apartment. His foster parent was home all the time so Barry had constant companionship and was never put in a kennel for any reason. He went everywhere with the foster parent. And, I mean, everywhere. Barry had only been trained to respond to the command, “No.” No other commands.
We had our work cut out for us. First to get Barry used to going outside to do his business. We did put pee pads around the house, and over a month’s period of time, he used those a few times a week. Barry and we were getting used to his cues as to when he needed to go. For the most part, he did fairly well especially with this routine being new to him.
It became apparent that Scott was in too much pain to take Barry out every 2 – 3 hours for his walks. Being only 4-months old it was difficult to get him to hold his urine longer than that. He also pooped 3 – 4 times a day. The walks, for the most part, were done by me. Barry was becoming my responsibility. He became a fulltime focus for me. I was beginning to resent this shift in responsibility. I was losing my life to this foster dog of which I was supposed to be only lightly involved.
I had been extremely sedentary for the past couple of years. Sitting around was not my normal life style. I had always had some kind of physical activity. It was key in keeping my weight in check. Now, Barry was giving me a good amount of walking and an arm workout when he would want to run but constrained by the short leash. Barry weighted a good 25 to 30 pounds so when he decided to run full bore and hit the end of the leash it took most of my strength to keep him under control. He was not leash trained when we got him so this was a new experience as well.
Even that amount of walking many times a day and the additional focus on feeding, play time, training, and pee pad monitoring and cleanup didn’t seem to increase my stamina or drop even one of the 20 pounds that accumulated over a two year period of a sedentary life. It seemed I was continually exhausted and in need of sleep. Barry had to be taken out between 11:00 pm and midnight and then again between 5:00 and 6:00 am. I always woke up about 3:00 worried that he was up peeing somewhere. I never really slept after that.
I finally told Scott I could do it any longer. It was too much. If he was able to help then maybe it would be a different situation. But he couldn’t.
Last week, we had to take Barry back to Coco’s Heart Dog Rescue for them to find a new foster family for him. We had Barry for 6 weeks. He learned a lot and got to be a very good dog. He will make a family a great pet. I hope that happens soon. I shed quite a few tears that day. It still makes me sad that we couldn’t have fostered him until a forever-home was found for him.
Funny how we have a vision of how things are going to be when we first start out. And then how things change and challenges become so much greater. Life has taught me to keep going …. until you can’t any longer or you find a way to meet the challenge. Age has crept in and added to the decision-making process. It’s a new experience to say, “I’m just too old for that”! It’s taken a while to be able to say that out loud. I’ve come to the realization that I don’t have a lot of years left and doing something that doesn’t bring me joy or satisfaction is just not worth continuing. Or if the thing brings me joy and/or satisfaction but leaves me exhausted and no space for anything else then I have to make a change. Fostering a dog was too much.
Deb’s Blog 