July 10, 2017 – I talk to Tina at Wolf Point Pound Puppies and tell her about the fence and my willingness to be a foster dad. She says Good! There is a vanload of dogs coming to Bozeman tomorrow and the shelter does not have room for them all, so yes, it would be great if I could help. I imagine a sweet adult shepherd cross.
“Can you take a Shepherd mom with eleven four-week-old puppies?”
Yikes!! Turns out there is an abundance of puppies this month. In addition to that litter, there are almost a dozen more coming down. After some discussion it is decided that I will take a litter of four eight-week-old pups without a mom. They are mixed breed, mostly black and white heeler/border collie/lab-ish dogs, except for one that looks like a Swiss mountain dog. I meet Marie, one of the other foster volunteers, at Heart of the Valley Shelter just as their van arrives. My pups are all together in a crate, and I could hardly ask for a cuter bunch. Allow me to introduce them:
Mason is a strong one, intelligent, a thinker. When he’s not got one of his sisters pinned to the ground he often just observes. His personality is that of a real companion dog, focused on the humans around him.
Addie is definitely the biggest and strongest of the bunch, and even at eight weeks she behaves as if she is looking for something to do, like pulling a sled full of supplies up a mountain. Poppy is the smallest, very sweet and cuddly, but her three siblings often gang up on her until she screams in pain. Then they all stop and get up, and she goes after them, jumps on them and it all starts again. It must be more fun than it sounds.
Mr. Powell is clearly the explorer of the bunch, wandering much farther from the house and into the tall grass than the others. His body shape is more like a black lab, and he has inquisitive eyes. He’s also the calmest, probably because he’s busy planning an expedition. When he crashes, he prefers the company of humans to his siblings, so he spends a lot of time alongside me or in my lap.
It’s a warm summer, so I set up a space next to the open door so they can go in and out as they please through the night, which they do. Unfortunately, their version of night ends somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m., which is when they start crying for food, or yapping while they wrestle, or making Poppy wail. After a few days of this I don’t mind, because they get some food, play for an hour and fall back asleep, as do I, and we all sleep until after the sun is up.
Jappy and Bella are tolerant and set a good example, so the pups quickly learn to sit when it’s feeding time.
Over the next seventeen days they grow at an amazing rate and almost every day I watch them reach a milestone. Somewhere in the tenth week they suddenly get the hang of running flat out and their fun factor increases tenfold – now they can play keep-away, or run with my two dogs, or chase butterflies. It’s enjoyable watching them have so much fun. Except when they’re having fun jumping on my legs and trying to hang on with their sharp little puppy claws. I bleed a lot these days.
But on day seventeen I have to bring them to Heart of the Valley. They will have their spays and neuters the next day, and go up for adoption after that. I watch the video HOV has made on adoption day of the four of them playing, and I can’t believe they had surgery the day before. Resilient little res dogs!
All of the dogs are adopted within an hour after they are available – no surprise there. Now the house is quiet. I appreciate the calmness of my own dogs. But it seems a little unnatural to sleep through the night.
Bozeman Foster Dogs 