koalathebear

Miss Cupcake went well in her meet and greet with a lovely family so will be adopted out on 27 June :'( She is growing up into a gorgeous dog.

I know the feeling. When the perfect application comes along, there's a feeling of: "Yay!!!!" followed by: "Oh no! *waaagggghhh!!!!" I bawled my eyes out for weeks over my first foster. I think the first one is the hardest but there have been others that were really, really hard to let go of. Usually the ones who we have nursed through sickness or done a lot of training with ... They all go to super awesome homes though and I keep in touch with all the families who adopt our dogs so that makes it so much easier. Good luck though, I really know how you feel. Someone pointed out to me that it's not 'natural' to take something into your home and heart, lavish love and care on it and then give it away ... so it's natural to feel sad... My husband reminds me of the good life the dog is going to and the difference the dog will make in the life of the new family

I don't think it should be a statutory entitlement, I'm happy with it to be discretionary. When my family dog died when I was in Sydney, my employer gave me a few days off to fly back home. I have no doubt that any of my other places of work would have done the same thing.

Cupcake and Dodge Ears up :) With her new collar Bored that no one wants to play with her :)

Left ear went up on 15 May 2014 :) She's looking really lovely

No more crate in the car, Cupcake's graduated to a puppy car harness. Her left ear is also On The Rise :laugh: The Gang Cutie patootie

Hard to say. She was only 4kg when she came into care and only a week later is 6kg, but 6kg is still pretty little for 4 months+. I think she's going to stay a very small Kelpie. She is coming along well. Her off-switch is well and truly activated and she puts herself into a crate of her own accord. Waits for food really well And we don't have to crate her in the evenings anymore when we're eating/on the computer. She goes and relaxes in a dog bed like the rest of our dogs. I love the way our fosters mimic our resident dogs.

Even though all of our fosters are house-trained, we warn that they will almost inevitably have accidents when they first go to their new homes. As people above have mentioned, it's usually best to go back to basics. I keep the dog on a leash inside or I section off a small area of the house e.g. the study so that the dog is never out of my sight. For the pups, they are crated. I toilet the dog after drinking, meals and at regular intervals. As the dog becomes more trustworthy, it has access to more of the house. Some dogs catch on faster than others. If I slip up and don't supervise properly, we will sometimes find a puddle or a renegade poo in a strange room of the house with which the dog isn't yet familiar. With younger dogs, any sign of sniffing, slightly frantic behaviour or pacing results in them being taken outside to toilet. We use urine-free (or an equivalent) to spray the area after we clean up. Good luck with it. House-training is one of the least fun aspects of dog-training and requires a lot of patience. We also have a lot of princesses for some reason so as soon as we the dog house-trained, it have a protracted period of rainy weather and then all bets are off

As everyone above has mentioned, it's very normal so we remove any expensive fancy bedding from the puppies until they're less mouthy. They don't necessarily like the chew toys until you make them interesting so you may to wave them around, drag them along the ground and play with them in a way which makes the pup think that they are awesome. If that doesn't work, we find that all our foster puppies love chewing up cardboard rolls from the middle of a toilet roll or a paper towel. Our dogs also like antlers to chew on. Pups tend to have a pretty short attention span so you can usually divert their attention to something else you'd rather they chew on. That being said, we are fostering a Kelpie puppy right now who, despite having heaps of toys, has a strange adoration for my slippers. As soon as my foot comes out of the slipper, if I'm not paying attention, the slipper is annexed and taken into the crate :laugh:

Wow you have a great memory, Tuxie. Ollie was indeed a bit porky when he first came into care. He lost weight because we put him on a diet and he ran around quite a bit with our guys I was worried that when he was adopted, the new family might overfeed him and he'd become porky again but they've clearly been managing his portions well so he's looking very good :) As for Cupcake, she is absolutely adorable. She's getting bigger - leggier and leaner but she's cute as a button. I know I could have adopted her out 10 times over while is still in her cute, little puppy stage but you get more impulse adoptions for the babies. When she's a little older, has some training and looks more Kelpie-ish and less puppy, only the more serious people will apply.

Update on former foster Frida With her brother Nico the Kelpie

Update on former foster Ollie With his sister Pip

Elbie, Hoover and Dodge with Cupcake the Kelpie puppy, our current foster dog. Cupcake with Elbie With Hoover With Dodge With Ruby (lilli_star's doggy)

Some more photos of Miss Cupcake who may be older than originally thought. She might be four months old despite being so little. With the gang With Dodge With Elbie With lilli_star's lab Ruby

She is really cute. Also very smart, confident and friendly so will be a really nice dog. There are more photos of here but will post a few of the extra cute ones here ... Hoover and his Mini Me :)

Twiggy's ready for her trial adoption tomorrow She's been freshly bathed And this is Little Miss Cupcake, our next foster who has arrived a little early Twiggy and Cupcake Hoover and Cupcake

Twiggy goes on trial adoption on Sunday so we got her hobo bag ready today. New collar, kibble, treats and some toys. We will miss the lovely girl

Thanks betsy. We'll have her for a bit longer - which is great. I'm going to miss her, she's such a gorgeous little dog.

Twiggy had her stitches out today. She's doing really well Her new owner will be driving from Sydney next month to pick her up

Poor Twiggy was sad and woozy after her desexing yesterday But she had Elbie, Hoover and Dodge to keep her company today during her recovery time

Twiggy is doing well :) Although the Pound photo should be 6 February. I got the dates wrong. 20 Feb is the date her puppies were dumped

Posting a complaint about dog parks here always results in everyone saying you should never go and it's on you for choosing to go into one ... Some people tend to be very black and white about it. We've been going to the dog park every week for years without incident. We just exercise the same caution that we always exercise around our dogs. We go when it's not too crowded, we leave if it gets crowded. We handle 3-4 dogs between the two of us and would never try to wrangle more than 2 on our own. We put our dogs on lead and keep an eye on any new dogs that come in and if things aren't looking comfortable, we leave. We haven't had to do that because there are regulars at our dog park - humans and canine and our dogs all get along. We've found a dog park where we like the setting, the people, the dogs and we're comfortable there. Once our foster dogs have reached an appropriate level of training, they've all been socialised at the dog park, too with no incident. We've met up at the dog park with dogs of friends and other DOLers. Although my dogs are very gentle with puppies and little dogs, I'll sometimes suggest to people they may want to move their puppy or small dog to the small dog yard if they don't want to be barrelled over. I'd much prefer to be at a dog park where I can just leave if it's uncomfortable than be walking down the road with my dog and rushed at by an off-lead dog with nowhere to run. In terms of unpleasant dog experiences, I've only had two and they were not at the dog park. One of my dogs has been attacked twice in his life - both times was at dog club during an agility class. Both dogs were asked later to leave the class by the instructor and only return once their dog had been rehabilitated. I totally understand why people do not want to go to dog parks, that's up to them, but for those of us who are vigilant and careful about which dogs parks we go to and what we do when there, they are an excellent place for the dogs to have fun.

Some photos of former foster Juniper who was at the Canberra Show watching her sister Jazz compete in flyball :) Juniper posing with Reggie, the brother of former foster Smudge :) I was so happy catching up with so many former fosters and their families

kumaakita took this lovely photo of Twiggy today Twiggy's "Adopt Me" vests arrived today. Yellow and turquoise :)