This is not a happy post about the typical usage of the phrase "foster failure". This is a sad story about how I failed my latest foster.
This was Lola.
Lola was a 6 year old dachshund who needed a foster home to fatten her up. She was just skin and bones, all ribs and sticky-out spine. She weighed 8.3 pounds. Her healthy weight would have been around 10 pounds. She also had bad dental issues. She had to have a lot of her teeth pulled. She recovered from that surgery in a different foster home but they could not keep her.
Lola was very scared when I picked her up from the Humane Society. She was shaking like crazy. She calmed down a little bit when I got her home, but she was still nervous. She was very submissive to my dogs and my cat so they accepted her immediately. She seemed happy when sitting in my lap, so we spent the night on the couch watching a movie.
I don't have a very good picture that shows how emaciated she was. This is as good a photo as I have, but trust me that she looked worse in real life:
During the next week Lola got more and more comfortable at my house. At first, her only voluntary interaction with me was if I would sit on the floor, she would very slowly and very deliberately crawl into my lap, as if she was hoping I wouldn't notice and shoo her away. After a few days, she'd just plop down in my lap as if she owned it. Eventually she felt comfortable enough to play. She liked to smell the cat and then run circles around him. She
loved squeaky toys. She couldn't get enough of playing fetch, though I always kept the sessions short because she was supposed to be gaining weight not burning it all off.
She was doing okay with the eating, not great...but okay. I was feeding her canned food twice a day and giving her unlimited dry food in her crate during the day. Many times she would ignore her food so I would sit down with her and feed her by hand. Sometimes she would eat the dry food in her crate, sometimes she wouldn't. For a day and a half she was a little tummy-sick and would throw up her dinner. The poor thing was just not able to gain any weight.
It was also hard for her to gain weight because she had lots of nervous energy. If she wasn't playing or cuddling with us, she was running from room to room to room. I was never sure if she was looking for the cat or just checking her perimeters for safety, but I finally took to putting her in an x-pen to keep her from running so much. I think she felt calmer being confined like that, because she would then lay down on the doggie bed and play with her toys.
Squeaky-squeaky-squeaky...She enjoyed snuggling up on the dog beds with the other dogs. She correctly interpreted Mo's warning growls as being false alarms. :) Mo pretending that Lola isn't there:
Look at that face! What a sweetie!
As I mentioned before, Lola loved squeaky toys. Frankie loves squeaky toys too. Lola did not think that Frankie should be allowed to have the squeaky toys, because they were
her toys. Sometimes they ended up playing tug-of-war with a toy, sometimes she would just bite him and take the toy away.
She might not have liked sharing toys with him, but she did like cuddling with him:
Last night, Lola decided a squeaky toy belonged to her and tried to steal it from Frankie. He tugged back, and being 25 pounds bigger than her, he had the leverage and the advantage. She was a little spitfire and didn't give up...and then I heard her scream in pain. I jumped up and saw blood everywhere. Frankie was already riled up from her picking on him, and her cries and screams riled up Georgie and Mo too. It took a few seconds for me to wade through the crowd of dogs to get to her.
Blood was pouring out of her mouth. I thought at first that Frankie must have bit her face. I put her in the sink to wash away the blood and find the wound. Eventually I washed away enough blood to realize it was her gums that were bleeding. I was able to use a towel to put pressure on the area to try to stop the bleeding and determine that a tooth had been partially yanked out. Yikes. I called the Emergency Animal Clinic and I even paged the Humane Society number that is for life-threatening emergencies only. Both techs I talked to said to keep her calm overnight and bring her to the Humane Society first thing in the morning (they don't staff veterinarians overnight). They told me that as long as the bleeding wasn't heavy, she would be okay.
I could tell the pain was pretty bad for her. I felt so terrible.
I put her crate right next to my bed for the night. She didn't cry at all. She didn't move around much, so I think she might have slept some. In the morning, the bed was a bit bloody in places and when I checked, the gums were still bleeding. Poor little Lola. She was scared and in pain. She reverted back to the scared little dog she was when I got her. She would barely crawl into my lap. She was scared of every movement. It was awful. She had been progressing and now she was back at square one, except it was worse because now she was injured too.
I took her to the Humane Society as soon as they opened. She was absolutely terrified, shaking even more than before. I was worried because they would have to anesthetize her to fix her tooth, and with 0% body fat that is a dangerous undertaking. I had weighed her before we left...8.3 pounds, exactly what she was when I got her. I suck. I didn't help her gain weight at all.
And this is where my terrible story of foster failure gets even more terrible. The Humane Society staff called me with an update: In addition to the tooth being pulled out, Frankie had broken her jaw. Her jaw bones were very weak and deteriorated, which was part of her dental problem to begin with. Because her bones were so deteriorated, they did not have the means or the resources to fix the fracture. They decided the best option would be to euthanize her while she was still under the anesthesia. Sadly, I don't have the means or the resources either so I had to agree.
Good night, sweet Lola. I failed you and I am so, so sorry. I miss the pitter-patter of your little paws as you run up and down the hall. I miss your little tail wagging at warp speed. I miss you curled up in a tiny ball on my lap. I miss your super soft fur on your long ears.
I was supposed to provide you with a safe place to get healthy for your second chance at the happy life you deserved. I failed you.
Okay, so we won the costume contest and not the actual race. But we got those super awesome foam fingers!! So, yeah, pretty much we rock!
You had to unscramble these letters to form the names of 8 local beers. They gave us the first letters of each so we thought it wouldn't be too bad. We were wrong. We looked online and we looked at beers in the fridge behind the bar. We wrote stuff down, crossed out letters, guessed, were told we were wrong, again and again. We debated whether or not to give up but figured we had already spent time so we'd better finish. Dumb. Our big mistake was not leaving right away. We finally gave up and stopped to use the restroom on the way out. While Christy was waiting for me, she overheard a couple teams discussing the correct answers on their way out. I'm not ashamed to admit that we used the answers we heard and then reworked the puzzle to make the other answers fit. After about 45 minutes, we got it right! Seriously. 45 minutes on one clue. Dumb.
At the end of the race, we had about 15 minutes left to finish by the cut-off, and we still needed one more tic tac toe clue - a picture of us on a mechanical bull. We had seen a bar with a mechanical bull the night before, but we couldn't remember where. We asked people as we ran and they suggested Bourbon Cowboy. This bar was about 2 minutes from the finish line so we were pretty confident we would finish in time. Until we got there...and it was closed! We did not have time to find another bar. Feeling defeated, I started knocking on the door. And the cleaning lady actually answered my knock. At about this time, another team came up also needing the picture with the bull. I explained to the cleaning lady what we were doing and what we wanted. She agreed to let us in! I couldn't believe it! Woo hoo! Then the other team rudely told the lady that they were coming in too. Ok, whatever. I would have done the same thing (but hopefully less rudely). And it was fine because we agreed that if they took our picture we would take their picture. All good. But then, as I was giving the girl her camera back she elbowed me out of the way to get out of the bull pit first. Literally, with her elbow in my chest! Wtf? Rude! She should have been thanking me for getting us into the bar in the first place, not trying to beat me up. They tried to beat us in a foot race to the finish. You know I wasn't having any of that! I hoped that Christy was prepared to keep up, cuz I was gonna kill myself sprinting if I had to just to beat that bitchy girl. Christy was prepared, we ran like hell and we beat them. Ha.
or a working visual clue that you have to physically manipulate to solve. For example, one working visual clue was a bowling ball return (yes, hidden out in the desert scrub) that you had to put a bowling ball into and when the ball rolled down, it hit some switch that caused the clue to light up. A bowling ball? Yes, we brought a bowling ball on the hunt, along with a big list of other suggested items to bring that may or may not help you solve the clues. I was very sad that we never got to use the 10' pole.
Ian and Kiri were our top solvers, followed closely by NFBF and Irene. Irene was our best clue location finder, just as she is in our adventure races. Christy was the driver, so she was a very valuable team player. And me? Um...I held the opened clue envelopes. And I brought snacks.
That guy in the orange tripped over the caution tape when the gun sounded. He didn't even lift his feet to try to get over. He just started running. It was pretty funny.
There were some hills and some rope climbs, too, but mostly running.
A jungle of tires:
The first of the mud pits:
I didn't get very muddy on this one. This was a really cold day and I was putting off getting wet as long as possible. Pretty wussy attitude for a mud run, huh?
That lip on the end of the slide sent me flying in the air. It was awesome! It was enough to make me go completely under water when I landed.
As a bonus, I found someone's vampire teeth floating in the mud.
From the top of the structure, you had to jump off and land on a high jump mat. The guy standing there catches you if you bounce off, like I did. There was another structure next to this one. There was a girl on the top of it who was scared to jump off. She must have been there a long time because she was in a heat ahead of mine. The guy at the bottom was saying "Ok, ready, 1...2...3!" and she'd say "4". It was pretty funny. I wonder if she ever jumped or if she just climbed back down the way she came up.
Muddy and wet:
I used the edge to climb up:
This was right after the water tunnels so my hands were muddy and wet. On my first attempt to pull myself up, my hands slipped right off the wood. Ouch.
Actually, the final obstacle was the really steep hill up to that finish flag!
Well, it was actually taken by a stranger in the parking lot after the race. We jumped that type of barricade as our first obstacle.
Sandbag climb in a moving truck. This was kind of fun:
Scaffold/barriers:
Wall:
Running in the stadium (this was the coolest part):
Low crawl (this wasn't supposed to be a mud run, but it had rained and it was too cold for the ground to dry, so we got a little muddy anyway):
The last obstacle was to jump over a pair of cabs and then a pair of cop cars. 
The last two photos are me, taken by the official race photographers. It would cost $18.95 to get one medium sized digital copy without watermarks. No thanks! :)
Lola was a 6 year old dachshund who needed a foster home to fatten her up. She was just skin and bones, all ribs and sticky-out spine. She weighed 8.3 pounds. Her healthy weight would have been around 10 pounds. She also had bad dental issues. She had to have a lot of her teeth pulled. She recovered from that surgery in a different foster home but they could not keep her.
Look at that face! What a sweetie!
As I mentioned before, Lola loved squeaky toys. Frankie loves squeaky toys too. Lola did not think that Frankie should be allowed to have the squeaky toys, because they were her toys. Sometimes they ended up playing tug-of-war with a toy, sometimes she would just bite him and take the toy away.
Last night, Lola decided a squeaky toy belonged to her and tried to steal it from Frankie. He tugged back, and being 25 pounds bigger than her, he had the leverage and the advantage. She was a little spitfire and didn't give up...and then I heard her scream in pain. I jumped up and saw blood everywhere. Frankie was already riled up from her picking on him, and her cries and screams riled up Georgie and Mo too. It took a few seconds for me to wade through the crowd of dogs to get to her.
Then we got out the spray paint.
Then, after umpteen hours, we were almost finished making the most awesome Halloween costume ever! They just needed the final embellishments. The plan was to wear these really awesome, clever, cool costumes to a pub crawl/costume contest evening in Cave Creek, then over to Nichole's for her annual costume party. We were going to steal the show all night long!
Robots like hockey:
After the Coyotes won the game (woo hoo!), Pat went to his own hockey game and I went to Nichole's party, where I did not steal the show but I had a very nice time anyway.
October 29:
October 31:
