After only 2 days, Apollo-Chase had to change foster home, due to no fault of his! Keep reading to learn more about what happened.
At 11pm at the end of Apollo’s Day 2 in foster care, I received a couple of calls from Chase’s foster dad. It turns out that Chase’s foster dad was experiencing health issues that led him to the Emergency Room! He was calling to ask me to come pick up Chase at his house while he was in the hospital, even though his friend was at his house. Unfortunately his friend who had come to pick up his kids would not be able to stay to take care of Chase and the resident dog. This was when I found out 3 crucial information that the foster had not informed us about:
- Despite what the foster had told us about having an at-home wire crate for Chase, he had none. Instead he had a flexible cloth crate that Chase could escape out of.
- Because he had no at-home wire crate for Chase, he had not been doing the Crate & Rotate method that we had recommended several times.
- His resident dog had been snapping at Chase trying to guard her food and her space. A crate & rotate method could’ve prevented this as it would’ve helped get the resident dog get used to Chase.
Now Chase would’ve been left alone with the resident dog as the foster’s friend would not stay to take care of the dogs…My husband and I knew they HAD to take Chase out of there!
We did have another foster, Tapas, with German Shepherd experience as he has his own German Shepherd, however since it was 11pm, I could not call the other foster. my husband and I then went to pick up Chase at the foster’s home. With nowhere else to go and despite already having two dogs at home that were still in the “Crate & Rotate” process, they took Chase home where he could stay in his crate on a different floor from the other 2 dogs. By the time everything was settled, it was 1am.
The next morning, the first thing I did was call our other foster, Tapas, to ask whether he could take in Chase for at least few days until Chase’s original foster got home from the hospital and was able to take care of him again. Thankfully, Tapas said YES!! An hour later Tapas came to pick up Chase. They did a pack walk with Chase & Tapas’s 5-year-old German Shepherd, Max. Max did bark at Chase a couple times, but other than that the pack walk went well. Tapas took in Chase anyway (and of course in his travel crate to ensure everyone’s safety during the car ride.
Tapas is a first-time foster who listened to our strong recommendation to crate & rotate the two dogs. Later that day, I stopped by their house to drop off some supplies for Chase. They were so welcoming that they invited her to their backyard to see Chase. Chase seemed to LOVE their backyard, as you can see from the video below.
Already Tapas, his wife and their 2 boys mentioned that they might want to foster chase until he gets adopted, not just for a few days. Tapas also indicated that he would try to train Apollo on some basic obedience training and get him to his normal weight. I indicated that she would have a conversation with Chase’s original foster about the situation first. Will Tapas & his family get to foster Chase on a long-term basis (i.e. until he gets adopted) or will I take him back to his original foster? Find out in our next blog post!!