 Any foster home that has been helping animals for awhile can tell you the stories of Foster Failure. Some animals come and go. They've healed from their wounds, put on weight, recovered from the surgery or have been successfully socialized. They head back to the shelter where they are lucky enough to meet their forever home and make someone happy for years to come. There are beautiful stories all across the country of people saving animals and animals saving people. Who rescued who? Sadie came to us with an upper respiratory infection - super common in shelter animals that are stressed out and are in close quarters with others. She was a fun one that earned the nickname Snotty Sadie. She didn't have an attitude or anything, she just sneezed snot. Everywhere. On everything. Super gross. But underneath that mucus was the sweetest girl I've ever known. She has never once snapped, growled, bit or scratched us. She absolutely lives for pets and head scratches and loves to curl up on the bed to watch TV with us.  My husband and I had a very difficult time when she had recovered from the URI and it was time for her to go back to the shelter. We did it, though, and we saw her drop off the adoptable list after a couple of weeks - usually our only indication that the animals have been adopted, as they just don't have time to follow up with every foster case.
To our surprise, we got a call a few days later saying that Sadie's URI had returned and would we be interested in taking her back in and being her Home Buddy until she got adopted. Of course we said yes! After about a week, it became obvious that this was simply fate. She was so comfortable in our home and we had just fallen in love with this sweet girl that we ended up adopting her. In the shelter world, this is called a Foster Failure. We couldn't be more pleased to fail! Comments are closed.
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