June 10, 2017 – Occasionally at the dog park I meet someone who is fostering a dog. Sometimes the shelter is short on space, or there is a dog that needs extra care, and they solicit the services of a volunteer who is willing to take a dog temporarily until someone adopts it. Like all the res dogs I’ve met, the few fosters I’ve encountered have always had great personalities, and I think, some day, I’d like to do that. However, I live four miles north of town, without a fenced yard, adjacent to hundreds of acres of wide open land, and beyond that, the mountains. So fostering wasn’t anything I seriously considered. Until this morning.
At about 7:45 the trucks from Fence Pro show up and drop bundles of posts and fencing around the back perimeter. Then the little post pounding machine crawls over and begins driving the first post in the ground, the beginning of a nice six-foot fence that will keep the dogs in and the deer away from the fruit trees. In addition to a safe half acre where I can leave my dogs when they would like to be outside, I will now have the ability to take a foster dog. I imagine one like the shepherd cross I saw at the dog park last time.
In the afternoon the fence is done. Bella and Jappy are confused. Something is preventing them from their normal practice of running at will, hunting ground squirrels in the big hay field east of here. They check the perimeter, then check it again. After a nap, they go check it again, wondering if perhaps they just dreamed it the first time.
Nope, still there. They are visibly disappointed. But in the coming days they get used to it, and I’m comfortable not having to check that they haven’t wandered too far. It’s a fine fence. I decide to make the call.
Bozeman Foster Dogs 