Fur The Love of Fostering

– for our precious foster girl Kali with the most amazing prickle kisses and stubby tail wags ♥

Adoption day for a foster parent is one of the most exciting and yet saddest. So many emotions transpire leading up to the day and when the day is finally arrived, all those emotions spill over in abundance. We tell ourselves to suck it up cupcake, put on your happy face because it is their happy day and we need to help them celebrate it. Letting go doesn’t get easier, learning how to identify and process the emotions quicker does but there are some fosters that a part of your heart and very soul leaves with them when they go. Kali was one of those.

We had a few successful foster and adoptions under our belt as a family, felt we had the hang of the process and were confident when we got the call about another foster (Kali) but this one had a slight twist. She had tested positive for advanced heartworm disease which means the heartworms had been present long enough to cause heart, lung, blood vessel, kidney, and liver damage. It is a lethal killer of a disease and without rigorous medical treatment, her clock was ticking. It was required for her to be in an atmosphere conducive to not only facilitate her pre-medical treatment of multiple pills a day and three required heartworm medical treatments over the course of three months but healing in between and afterwards. The kennel simply wasn’t an option for her with the stress levels she had to avoid to ensure her organs wouldn’t fail her. So off I went to go get our newest foster, beautiful survivor to be, Kali.

Arriving at the shelter, I did my mental check of all the items I had, what I needed to grab while I was there and the questions I would need to ask. Opening the door to the main kennel area, I was all business to ensure this gal’s success and then there she was. The most doe eyed, ears for days, stout bodied with little legs and nubbin of a tail wagging a million miles an hour looking right at me with her tongue out happily playing with a Kong ball. My heart broke, shattered, melted and was glued back together all at the same time with just the love radiating from her eyes. I had always intended to do everything in my power to help her but now I needed to do everything in my power to help. She was special, her love unique and someone needed her badly in their life. I wasn’t about to fail either of them.

The day had come for Kali’s first heartworm treatment and we were very excited for her to finally be on the path of healing from this dreadful disease. You know that saying, “Life is like a box of chocolates”? Well, they should have said “Kali is like a box of chocolates” because no sooner had we dropped her off and left, the vet was calling me on my cell phone to let me know they couldn’t proceed due to Kali having a further advanced medical condition that would need to be addressed before we could proceed with the heartworm treatments. So much for getting that coffee I thought I needed to wake me up. I could feel my heart race, blood pressure rise and the underarm sweating start. What could possibly be a more advanced medical condition that would stop heartworm treatment?! Was she going to even live?! I needed something much different than coffee right then and there but I was driving and it was only 8 am. Immediately, I turned back around and started straight back to the veterinarian to go over the details. The vet continued to talk…..”She is pregnant with eight puppies give or take two based on her x ray and about 10 days to birthing if I had to guess”. My mind went numb…….no, she was just a little portly……nooooo…..no. No.

Yup.

Words still escape me as to how to describe the quantity of WD-40 that would have been required to de-rust brain had it actually had metal cogs but slowly and surely the information sank in the vet was giving me and how this pregnancy was a great risk to her given her condition but she was to far along for anything else to take place at this time. Upon calling the dog manager who’s shock was equal to my own, the immediate question now was how is the shelter going to do this? We have no where for her to give birth outside of the kennel space and that stressful environment alone could end her. How is the shelter going to take on this cost of 8 more puppies? How are we going to find fosters for all these puppies? Will she be able to live through this birthing? What if she doesn’t live and then we have puppies in need of an immediate lactating mom or bottle feeding? I knew what I had to do.

10 days later to the day, Kali gave birth to eight beautiful, healthy puppies in her specially made whelping area in our home’s attached garage. Her labor was slow and we assisted only when needed but she made it through. Kali was going to be ok. That’s all that mattered. Or so I thought in the immediate moment. Never is a strong word and I can’t say I would never do for another what I have done for Kali should a same situation present itself but I will say my preference is to not have to power wash my garage out twice a day from 8 puppies worth of poo for the next 8-12 weeks I had them.

Kali’s puppies were all adopted successfully, she got spayed and she was finally ready to start her heartworm treatments. It felt like this day for her would never happen but it was finally here! I packed her overnight bag with her favorite duck toy and blanket ensuring neither were washed so she could have all the familiar smells while spending the night at the vet’s office and off we went. Kali through many visits had become accustomed to going to the vet’s office and was quick to go back with the vet tech ready for her chance at good health. I went out to the car and I will admit I waited a good fifteen minutes before I left just in case there was a, “Kali is like a box of chocolates” moment.

Heartworm treatment is brutal. There is no nice way to say it. Once the first injection is administered, the adult worms start to die in a few days, their decomposing bodies breaking up being carried to the lungs where they lodge in the small blood vessels until eventually reabsorbed by the body. Reabsorption can take months and severe post treatment complications are often due to these fragments of dead heartworms. It took the energy right out of Kali especially in the first week, she lost the sparkle in her eyes, would look at us not understanding why she couldn’t play with the other dogs, would lose interest in her food sometimes and I felt powerless to do anything other than lay there next to her at night and pray the treatment worked. Treatment after treatment after treatment. Please invest in heartworm preventatives. You don’t want to ever see this first hand or subject your companion to this.

Upon the third successful heartworm treatment + 30 day wait period, Kali was now a whole new doggo! She was still the best prickle kisser in town with the cutest wag this side of the Missouri river who would insist on her morning snuggles every single day but she had a whole new sass level to her. She was single and ready to mingle! Her adoption profile was updated with the cutest of pictures and cleverest of descriptions. She was ready for her furever home and fur the love of fostering, I was sure her person(s) were out there but they were going to have to be equally as special to have her after everything we had been through together. She was not a foster anymore, she was our family in a way no other foster had been.

We were coming up on a year and not a single application for Kali. No one could understand it. I had made the resolution to myself that if we couldn’t find her person(s) by this year’s fall then it was a sign and I would adopt her myself knowing full well that it would mean I would not be able to foster going forward due to my limits. The very same hour, I received a text notifying me of an application that had come in for Kali, it was a really good one and they felt it would be a perfect fit. Stopping everything I was doing, I immediately looked up the application and did my due diligence of research, internet stalking, jk jk! but am I? Panic set in. It wasn’t too late, i could still tell them I am just going to adopt her. Are they really going to be good enough for Kali? OUR Kali? Wait, what if they never let me see her again? What if they…. what if…..What if, this was her happily ever after? What if this was always meant to be? What if this was exactly who I was not meant to fail when I looked at her that moment at the shelter and knew I needed to do everything in my power to help? I owed Kali this.

Reluctantly I made the call to set up a day and time for Kali to meet her applicants. My heart would be broken either way if they rejected Kali or accepted her. I tried to be as pleasant as possible during the meet and great but found I had to resort to all business to not break down crying. They were perfect. They were hers. They didn’t know it yet but I knew. Its odd, you get that sense about you when you foster. Somehow you just know. They must have known it too because they reached back out wanting to proceed with adopting Kali shorty after. I was elated, over the moon so excited for her, and knew in my core that this was right because as much as my heart ached it was also at peace knowing she would have them both. It was time for me to break up with Kali and let her move on. It’s not her, it’s me. Kali deserved this and I couldn’t be selfish any longer with her love.

Kali was home. Furever.