ANNIE - JOHN - JAKE

Why I foster? About 6 years ago we were outside playing in the pool. When I jumped out of the pool, Opened my phone and there was a post on Facebook about a pregnant Momma in the shelter. A rescue worker was pleading for a foster to step up as the shelter was going to spay the pregnant Mom. I looked at John Housel and said we need to help. It says there are 5 babies. We reached out to the rescue and said, We have zero experience with fostering or pregnant Mom's but we would like to help! How hard could it be.??? Wellllllll Momma didn't give birth to 5 puppies. She gave birth to 13 puppies. 12 survived . Everything that could happen to newbie fosters did! Momma got sick and we learned quickly that everything we needed to do to help this family survive we would do. 100% care for Momma,rotating pups to nurse and bottle feeding. We kept the family alive and worked the hardest 6 weeks of our lives until we could move a few pups to other fosters. We were hooked. Nothing matches the feeling of the win! We have been fostering since. Our 11 year old son now almost 18 learned that that nurturing a throw away dogs and watching them blossom in to the most loved beings is the most rewarding. He has a huge heart. He also learned quickly that the little heartbreak of them leaving means we get to help others. He also adopted and trained his own dog from at-risk litter. We have had 1-17 fosters in our home at a time. Sometimes we feel a bit crazed as I do work also. Most times we have it well under control. Litters of course take more time than single pups or dogs. But we do what we can. When we can. The fewer fosters we have in our home. The more we do to help network others and work behind the scenes. We now help other fosters within our rescue to support them. For us it is about the lives that we give a chance to. I've had people thank me for what we do from other states and countries. The best are the messages that say you helped motivate someone to try. I honestly can't even explain the feeling I get when one of our babies gets adopted. We have made friends with adopters from around the country. We have gone to doggy birthday parties. Joined group pages to follow our babies on their forever journeys. It has cost our family nothing but time and love. Everything that we are able to give. We have had our share of losses. But ...... if we said no. There would have been zero chance of a win. We have no idea how many fosters we have had come into our home. I only know there is space for more. I mentioned our first litter. Now the last litter . That really isn't our litter at all. But I needed a Buddy system. This last litter the first few days were critical for care. They are the Director's foster family. Normally Momma's do all the work. Patti still needed to finish out a few weeks of work. Momma had an emergency c-section and was just out of it after. The 7 surviving pups were premature. They couldn't nurse. Patti syringe fed the pups for over 24 hours to keep them alive. But she needs to work. So that is when John said we have to help, bring them home. We helped syringe feed 7 babies around my work scheduled 24 hours a day for 5 days while teaching pups to bottle feed. All the while working to get the babies back to nursing. After 5 days they went back to Patti who continued to bottle feed and work babies to nurse Momma. By the following week when they came back to me. We had 7 nursing babies for the win. Now they are with Patti full time. Big fat healthy Mom and Pups. Was it a tough few weeks? You betcha! We would team up again in a heartbeat to help. Team work, Village and DogRRRNation aren't taken lightly. The wins are far from the losses. We will be forever grateful to be entrusted to try!