Day 24, He’s flown the nest

So today was the day we have been working towards, Chase getting his forever family. It has been a mixed day emotionally, I think you put so much into having a foster puppy, all the training, socialising, etc. It’s all because you want them to be successful when they leave the safety of your home, but you can’t help but get attached.

The last week has been much of the same routine, walks, training and general socialization. My husband has gone away with work, so it has been quite difficult trying to manage three young children, and a puppy, he always manages to cause mischief while my back is turned! But I know my feet will feel quite cold tonight with my chief foot warmer gone.

And my tv watching companion (Chase loved Crufts)…

But we enjoyed our last walk today…

And the best thing is, he has been adopted by my friend Zoe and her lovely family. I know he is going to have the best time, and I will still be able to see him once he has settled in.

For any one unsure about fostering, it is hard work, you need to have the time and energy, and not be precious about your house. And the whole family needs to be on board, as you all need to be involved. It is however one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.

We have already talked about when we will next foster, our youngest is about to start crawling, and my husband is away a lot over the next 6 months. So maybe September? I personally can’t wait for the next puppy to come in and turn out house upside down, happy chaos 😊

Day 17: Ups and downs

So we continue on this fun adventure, and while Chase is not 100% perfect yet (let’s be honest, who is?), I really feel like we are getting somewhere. Less accidents in the house, almost stopping himself from licking faces, knowing he isn’t meant to chew the kids toys etc. Even when I look at him, he seems to have grown, not just in size, but in maturity. As with any young dog, we still have a few creases to iron out.

On Tuesday, Chase went to work with my husband. We felt he was getting very attached to me, and needed to have a bit more socialization with adults. He is great with kids, and has met the odd adult dog walker or friend, but hasn’t had a huge amount of interaction, especially with men. My husband works in a noisy helicopter hanger, so it was also a good chance to get him used to noise, and people wearing silly hats. Chase was a big hit with my husband’s colleagues, and although initially cautious, he soon warmed up. At one point, my husband left the room, and was told that Chase became very distressed, barking, and chewing his harness. The fact my husband returned quite quickly, and Chase wasn’t reprimanded over the noise or chewing will hopefully help him realise he is not going to be abandoned, and help reduce this anxiety.

Chase has also been practicing his ball skills, he seems to quite like a football, and will entertain himself when given one.

Today, Chase had two long walks, and my eldest children were at nursery. Chase seemed well settled with a quiet house, and worn out from his walks. After his first walk, He was quite muddy, and settled quite well in the kitchen with our older spaniel to dry off. So progress. My coat does have a Chase inflicted rip on the arm though as it was dangling over the baby gate, the temptation was clearly too much.

And our grumpy spaniel is failing at pretending to not like him….I don’t blame her.

Day 8, Slush Puppy

Well, Chase has been with us for a week now, and what a rollercoaster it must have been. So many new things he has discovered. Looking at him in the house, you would think he has been here for weeks.

The snow has begun to melt, which has meant our dog walks are very stop/start, so many smells to investigate. Chase is becoming more confident when meeting other people and dogs on a walk, although he will not directly approach them, he is not hiding behind my legs as much.

I have also found that since he has settled in, and the learning curve is platoed, Chase is needing more to occupy him during the day. I have continued with his basic training, building on the commands: ‘sit’, ‘paw’, ‘down’, ‘stay’ and ‘wait’. I think I may need to step it up a little to keep his brain active. When he has too much energy, he tried to release it by playing with the kids, but as they are still quite young, this play can end up being too boisterous.

He always settles down on the sofa in the evenings for a cuddle though, and is a really mummies boy.

Next weeks tasks:

🐕 Crack toilet training

🐕 Continue building on Chases confidence when left alone.

🐕 Master commands he has begin learning, maybe add some more.

🐕 Introduce Chase to some more dogs and people

Day 6, it’s still cold outside

So, it’s been a couple of days since my last post, we have been able to slow things down a bit now that Chase is relaxing into family life. He is doing so well considering this time last week, he was in a van, coming all the way from Romania having never lived in a house, or experienced family life.

One thing we have noticed, and I have mentioned it before, Chase has become very attached to us, and if allowed, he could become a bit of a ‘Velcro dog’. While I accept that he will need to be adopted by a family who are around a lot, I don’t want to to encourage his anxiety when separated from us, or his future family. So, one thing I have been practicing this week is tying Chase up, walking a short distance away, and then returning. Gradually increasing the distance. Chase is able to escape his harness if he thinks you are leaving him, so I had to find an enclosed area. This is Chase’s reaction when I started:

But after a few attempts, he began to settle down:

And we had a good off lead play afterwards 😊

I will continue doing this activity when we get the opportunity.

Chase has also been practicing his lead walking, he is generally quite good, and only really pulls when he thinks the ‘pack’ is becoming separated. I made a quick video of how he is doing on the lead:

Today, we went to visit a friend, who has two sons, one of which is on the autistic spectrum, and both love dogs. Chase has only spent time with my three children, and not yet had the opportunity to meet and play with other children. It didn’t take him long to warm up, and before we knew it, he was tearing around the garden with them before flopping on the sofa for a snooze. It just shows how adaptable he is, and how much he loves children.

We have been continuing with manners and toilet training, and now that the snow has cleared a bit, I have been out to the shop to get some chewing bones and toys. This is one item I will make sure we have in stock for any future foster pups as we forgot how much puppies chew.

We are looking forward to the weekend to keep building on the skills Chase has been working on, and celebrating his one week anniversary with us. We still can’t believe how lucky we have been to have such a great first foster pup.

Day 4, Its a snow day!

So Chase woke up in the night and actually asked to go out for a wee, while it did make us wonder why we didn’t decide to foster puppies in the summer, it was nice to see that toilet training is getting there. Then, at a more reasonable hour when we all decided to get up, we saw the blizzard outside the window, which means only one thing…..’Snow Day!’

I dug out my winter boots, and headed out with the Dogheads to the village shop, Chase loved bouncing around in the snow, and wanted to stop and sniff everything on the way. At the shop, I left them tied up outside while I nipped in for supplies, on my return, quite a crowd had gathered, lured in by those puppy dog eyes.

After breakfast, the kids were desperate to head out on the sledges, so we wrapped up and headed out again. Chase loved running after the sledges, and bouncing in the deep bits of snow. We let him off the lead as he never strays too far from our side, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to build on his recall.

On the way back, we met plenty of people out and about, Chase still needs to build his confidence up with strangers and unknown dogs, but I’m sure this will come with time.

Persevering with crate training, we gave Chase his lunch in the crate, leaving him for an hour again, as we have the last few days. He settled much better, although still barks and whines.

Once we had all rested, and warmed up a bit, I took Chase out for a walk without the kids. This gave me another opportunity to work on some recall with Chase away from distractions. With our older dog as a role model, he has picked it up really fast. He is also now ‘sitting’ and ‘waiting’ when asked, either before eating food, or before running once his lead has been removed.

Tonight, he was put on the adoption page, we feel so proud of how far he has come, and we know he is only our foster dog, but it’s so hard not to fall in love with him. So we had mixed feelings when seeing his photos on there. I’m sure a new family will meet the high standards set.

Day 3, Operation Toilet Training

So, this cold weather and exciting snow has set our toilet training back a bit, hence today being ‘Operation Toilet Training’ day. Chase had his breakfast, then straight out for a brisk walk in the arctic weather. Nellie our resident dog looked at us like we were mad and went back to bed.

I can tell you lots of things which happened on our walk, we saw lots of scary people with their hoods up, we jumped around and ate some snow, we saw a really noisy tractor……but do you know what didn’t happen? Yep, all that effort, and no outdoor wee.

Eventually we gave up and headed home to defrost. Original plans had been cancelled due to the weather, so we all opted for a lazy morning. Even though it’s important to introduce Chase to lots of new things, nothing is more essential than the ‘art of being lazy’, and as usual, Chase picked it up pretty quickly.

Later in the morning, we decided to head over to a friend’s house, which gave me an ideal chance to leave Chase alone for the first time. I filled a kong up with peanut butter, and popped him in his crate. We left him with the radio on, and the doors shut to try a reduce the noise pollution. After being away for an hour, we returned home. He was still barking 😣. We will continue with crate training, but he’s not happy about it.

After lunch, we had a play in the garden with what was left of the snow, Chase loves finding sticks and little ‘treasures’ to run round and shake.

Once all the fun of the garden was finished, it was nap on the sofa time, followed by another short training session. I am not planning to do too much in the way of obedience training as I think it will be a nice thing for the new owners to do using their own commands. We just reinforced the ‘sit’ command.

Later in the day we had another trip to the park where I let Chase off his lead, knowing it was an enclosed space. I did have a ‘heart in mouth’ moment though when Chase found a puppy sized gap in the fence and ran through. Luckily I got him back, but the glint in his eye made me think he will need to have lots of recall training before he is allowed off lead. There is nothing he enjoys more than a good run around, and having a human chasing him would make it so much fun.

We had one more walk this evening, but again, no wee outside, ‘Operation Toilet Training’ will continue with a vengeance tomorrow, be warned Chase!

You can’t be mad at him for long though…..

Day 2, we met a hoover!

So, last night went fairly smoothly. When we first agreed to foster Chase, it was decided he would sleep in a crate at night time. It made sense, it would reduce the chance of accidents, and ensure he stayed downstairs. So last night of course he slept in the bed. Our excuse being that we need to keep the neighbours onside if we ever want to foster again in the future, and Chase howling and barking the place down would defiantly put our fostering in jeopardy. That being said, he was brilliant, and my husband said he gives the best cuddles, so I have been temporarily replaced.

This morning he was quite excited and full of energy. This combination seemed to mean that he had forgotten all his manner training from the previous day, so we spent a few hours as a family reminding him about not jumping up, not chewing every object in sight, and not weeing on the floor. Once he had calmed down, he seemed to remember again.

After breakfast, I started some obedience training with him, it seemed a good way to get him focused. We began with the simple ‘sit’, and he picked it up straight away. He is very quick to learn, but I have to be careful not to overdo it as I think he could possibly get bored of doing the same thing for too long and switch off.

Once we had got ourselves sorted, we went for a walk to the park. Chase is doing well on his lead, and getting the hang of walking by the buggy which is a tricky skill to master. He was quite cautious along the main road with all the noisy traffic, and really doesn’t like it if the group splits up. If the kids are too far in front, he whines and tries to catch them up, and if they are behind, he digs his heels in until they catch up. Hopefully this will improve once he realises we won’t leave him completely.

Once at the park, we kicked the football around. He enjoyed chasing the ball, but soon got bored and went off to explore.

Once home, I gave him his lunch in the crate, and left him in for an hour, knowing he was tired and hoping he would settle. He barked for around 45 minutes, settling a bit towards the end.

After lunch, Chase had trip out in the car to collect my eldest from nursery. He then had his first brush which he absolutely loved. I think he could have quite happily sat and been brushed all afternoon..

After his pamper session, I decided that I had put it off long enough, and it was time for the big scary hoover. Chase really wasn’t keen, but he seemed to realise that no one around him was panicking so it couldn’t be that bad. The hoover is out on a regular basis in our messy house, so he will have plenty of opportunities to get used to it.

Later in the day, Chase came along to my daughter’s dance class where I left him in the car for 40 minutes. I am trying to get him used to being left for short periods of time, so that he doesn’t get stressed when left alone. He seemed perfectly happy when we returned to the car, I think he had even had a sneaky nap (not at all jealous).

This evening has been a chilled affair with such a busy day, -2 outside, so he hasn’t been overly keen on heading out for a wee, preferring the comfort of the sofa. I don’t blame him.

Day 1 in the mad house

Today, we embarked on our dog fostering journey, 1 am to be exact. I found myself sat in the car at Cambridge Services with my thermos of tea awaiting the arrival of our first foster dog, all the way from Romania. I had mixed emotions, nervousness, apprehensive, but mostly excited about finally meeting him.

When the van pulled up, I was greeted by two tired men who had driven non stop for over 2 days, delivering countless dogs to adopters and fosterers all over Europe. They handed me our puppy (Carson), and his pet passport, nodded their heads and left. So it had begun.

The drive home was noisy, there may have also been a Poonami in the crate, but if I had been travelling in a van for over two days, I think I might have done the same.

When we arrived home, I gave Carson a bath, some food, and let him meet our resident spaniel, Nellie. I can’t say she was overjoyed with this new bouncing addition (And boy was he bouncing), but after a few half hearted snarls from both parties, she settled back on her bed behind the sofa. By this point, it was 4am, so myself, Carson, Nellie and my youngest child settled down for the rest of the night in the living room.

Our peace was disturbed later in the morning by two very excited children, who raced downstairs to finally meet the puppy they had been told about, and it was at this point, any worries about fostering dissolved, Carson LOVES children. So, while they played, (supervised by the husband), I sneaked upstairs to catch up on some sleep.

When I returned back downstairs, I was informed that the puppies name had changed. They couldn’t remember that ‘Car’ name, so now he would be known as Chase from ‘Paw Patrol’. And he was behaving himself, but had weed a couple of times on the floor, naughty Chase.

As the day went on, we decided that Chase was not a dog who wanted to relax and recover from his long drive in the house, so we decided to head to one of our local parks, 10 minutes drive away.

Chase wasn’t so sure about the car, I expect he thought he was back on the road again after escaping the lorry earlier that morning, he seemed very relieved when we got him out after 10 minutes.

I took Chase on a short walk, taking my time allowing him to get used to wearing a lead. Within 15 minutes he had gone from leaping around like something possessed, to a nice (calmish) dog walking beside me.

After our walk, he had a play on the park with the kids before heading home. Our trip back was much quieter, he even fell asleep.

By the end of the Day, Chase had:

* Met and interacted with a new dog

* Met and interacted with children

* Been introduced to a collar and lead

* Begun toilet training

* Explored the house

* Stood by a busy road

* And much more…

So, it’s no surprise that we are all. pooped. Hopefully we will have a nice quiet night, ready for the fun to begin again in the morning.

fun to begin all over again tomorrow.