Pretzel

During Covid, the local animal shelters were able to adopt out all or nearly all of their dogs (not sure about cats). But now they have filled up again unfortunately. Having two dogs is perfect for me. They keep each other company but I can keep one on each side of me during walks and have one hand to pet each of them. Three gets to be a lot. But I thought maybe I could foster a dog temporarily and maybe the shelters would catch up on adopting their dogs out. I finally decided that I should do that over the holidays since I was planning on being home all of that time anyway. I made an appointment for today and they matched me with a dog named Pretzel. They said she is a favorite of the volunteers and has been at the shelter since June. She has been fostered out a few times, but nobody had adopted her. Her web page says she is 4 years old, but it seems like she may be a little older than that. She looks like a cross between my old dog, Rosa, and Bella. She was very well behaved while she waited for me to fill out the paperwork and to get fitted with a new harness for her trip home. They gave me a bag of stuff to take home, but it was mostly just some contact information, a collar, and a gallon ziplock bag of the food she has been eating.

I took her for a short walk outside the shelter and she promptly took care of business, which they said she was very good about doing (I imagine shelter dogs learn to quickly make the most of any outside time they get). It seemed like she was mostly just looking for a car she could get into and get away. Eventually I got to my car and popped the tailgate, but she didn’t manage to jump up into the back without some help first. She did surprisingly well in the car on the way home through a lot of traffic. She didn’t try to get interfere with my driving (unlike my dogs). I parked down the street so my dogs wouldn’t know I was home and we walked around a little before going into my backyard. I let Pretzel off of the leash and she wandered around some, stopping a few times to just roll around in the leaves and grass. And of course she made lots of pit stops and also seems to be having some stomach issues. Bella is usually fine with other dogs, but Buddy Baer can either be happy to see a dog, indifferent, or angry. So I let Bella out first and they did fine, but Bella wasn’t overly interested. We hung out a while longer and Bella mostly just did her usual things in the backyard and I followed Pretzel around to see what she was checking out. Eventually I went in and got Buddy Baer, who was very excited about all of this. He was okay for a second and then decided to jump on her, maybe to play or maybe not and Pretzel immediately went back after him, so I put Buddy back in the house. I tried a little later with about the same result. He isn’t really angry, he just wants to jump on her.

I went inside and put Buddy Baer in the bathroom and brought Pretzel into the guest bedroom. I figured I would set that up as her room. The shelter said it is best to give a new foster a few days to decompress and be separate from the other dogs. I think that might be effective as she gets used to the house and Buddy and Bella get used to her being there, but not overly excited or getting into conflicts of any kind. She likes me being in the room with and eventually would lie down on the bed. I’m not sure why they didn’t give me a crate and I didn’t ask for one, so I set up my old crate which is a little small in case she wants to be in a crate like she probably was at the shelter. I put it by a heating vent since my dogs seems to like to sleep next to the vent. She stuck her head in there but seems to prefer lying on the bed.

I put Buddy away one time and walked her out to the backyard. Bella tagged along with us and did fine. We came back in and Pretzel wanted to explore the house a little, so I followed her around while she sniffed everything out. Then we went back into the guest room and there was Bella, making herself at home in the crate.

She will be taking meals in her room for a little while and I will slowly blend in more of the food my dogs usually eat. I took my dogs for a walk after dinner and left her in the room. Then I took her for a walk. She did great on her walk. She has long toenails from not walking that much, so hopefully she can wear those down a little. She generally wants to come with me when I leave the room, but then seems to calm down before long. I’ve been trying to go in an out a little so she knows I am around and will come back.