Puppy love: Time, love in foster care heal wounds

By Karin Sherbin
Published: June 17, 2008

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they realize they don’t have to ask their mother for permission.

And so it was that I took home a doleful dog of basset/beagle heritage, despite hearing faint echoes of a decades-old remonstrance, “Don’t bring any dogs home.”

I had met the dog at an adopt-a-thon. She sat patiently in a small pen as people passed by quickly, garnering only one comment from a woman who concluded, “She doesn’t do anything.” As a volunteer, I offered, “That’s the kind of dog you want.”

At the end of the day, I ignored the faint echoes of mom and ignored the fact that, as a foster family, I had already committed myself to picking up a puppy rife with mange the very next day. The shelter employee at the adopt-a-thon had intimated the dog’s days were numbered, giving immediacy to the word rescue. She was soon at my house.

My dog Misha gave me a baleful glance but accepted the newcomer. That first day, I pieced together from the dog’s behavior and documents that she was two years old, had been surrendered by her owner to the Bedford shelter, had given birth recently and had been a house dog, who probably had never been walked because she pulled horribly while leashed.

The next afternoon I drove alone to pick up the puppy. A saintly Bedford woman had rescued the emaciated, nearly bald puppy by the roadside. After one week, Tina thought it best if the dog continued her recovery with someone who could spend more time socializing her.

Tina, her husband and their daughter handed over the dog with the dog’s favorite blanket and the assurance that the puppy was a quiet, shy girl.

She also was a mess. About 95 percent of her fur gone. Her skin was scabby with a few weeping wounds, and the stench of illness enveloped her. Her furless face, wrinkled by starvation, reminded me of an old man’s. I wore gloves to avoid feeling her grotesque skin.

Once home, I separated her in a pen from the other two dogs. But that quiet, shy dog immediately began barking furiously and climbed over the four-foot high netting to be with the other dogs. After repeated escapes, she got her way.

Over the next few weeks, much changed. I named the adult dog Baguette in homage to the French origin of bassets and her body shape. The puppy became simply Puppy. A combination of drugs and medicated shampoo healed Puppy and allowed her fur to grow back; it’s now a joy to stroke her velvet coat of black, white, and chestnut. She’s also the usual bundle of puppy energy and affection.

Baguette does indeed do something. She sits companionably by my side or engages in mischief, as when she escapes through a gate in the blink of an eye. She can leap three feet high from a standstill. She also babysits Puppy. The two sleep together, with Puppy using Baguette as a pillow, and play endlessly when awake. Sometimes Misha, a martinet of border collie ancestry, will dash in growling when the play becomes rough-housing.

Baguette and Puppy are my second attempt at fostering. A couple in Salem adopted my first foster, Rascal. They wrote afterwards that they were blessed by the addition of Rascal to their home.
I have great hope that someday other adoptive parents will write me similar notes about Puppy and Baguette.