Foster Journal

February 2001: FosterDogs Gets A Web Address

February 4, 2001

I called Bingo's new mom yesterday, and I had to laugh because it was just like you wrote:

"There were times when they'd say everything was okay, but you could hear in their voice that it wasn't, so
we encouraged them to open up by asking things like "is he eating okay", "is he pottying okay", "any trouble with the cats", "any trouble with the kids", etc."

At first she said everything was fine, but I kept asking questions. Finally I found out that he has had some housetraining problems, and he pulls pretty badly on the leash. So I gave her some tips on the housetraining (I think they were waiting for him to tell them he had to go out, which he doesn't do) and I told her where to get a Gentle Leader to help with the pulling problem.

Other than that, it sounds like he's doing great. They decided to keep his name, although she said she should
probably call him Shadow, since he follows her everywhere. He gets along fine with the kids. So i'm happy.

"We had an annual reunion/fundraiser"

This is something I want to get started for the families who foster and the people who adopt the foster dogs. A side benefit might be to get more people interested in fostering.

"I don't know if other breed adopters are like this, but a lot of people seemed to want to help out and give back
something when they have a successful adoption."

I do think you are more likely to get continued involvement with purebreds, because it's almost like joining a club.With our adopters, there is no real sense of unity or "joining the club" cos the dogs are all so different. You can go to a fundraiser and immediately pick out the group from Going Home Greyhounds, but the rest of the dogs don't stand out as much. That's something I want to try to change with the foster reunion idea, to make a more cohesive group.

I also think our foster families should have more of a "group unity" thing. I try to keep up on which dogs are in foster care so if someone calls about a dog but I don't have what they are looking for, I can refer them to one of the other fosters. I don't think other folks are doing this, simply because we don't know anything about each other's dogs. Our foster program is still a work in progress.

February 18, 2001

Found this while going through old email messages, and thought it was worth posting here as a little memento:

Your Web Address, fosterdogs.com, has been verified as registered (or transferred) as of today. Your Web Address should be functional with the services you ordered in a few hours.

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