Day 1 - Friday, January 9th, 2009

Let me introduce myself - I live in a medium-sized town in Kansas, have a husband, a house, a yard, a job in special education, 4 cats, and 2 chihuahuas.

Chihuahuas are like potato chips - you never can have only one. We have the space for more, but we also like to ensure that our animals have the best possible food and vet care so the time has come where we decided that our financial limit has been met.

So I came up with the brilliant idea of volunteering as a foster parent for another dog at the local Humane Society - that way we could help more animals, without the enormous cost.

I didn't know how I was going to deal with giving up an animal after it has been part of the family, but I decided that was my personal problem and I just had to deal with it.

My experience with the Humane Society has so far consisted of us sending them checks and going to their fundraisers since I'm too wussy to work there. All of our animals have been rescues in one way or the other, and I deeply admire the work the people at the shelter do, but I just can't stomach all of the things you see there every day.

Fostering is one way to help without actually having to be at the shelter so we went for it.

I applied for a license with the state and got it very quickly. Then we waited for a home visit from the shelter. We had been warned that it could take a while, so some time passed without us hearing anything. Suddenly I received an email from the shelter saying they were going to waive the home visit for now since they had animals that needed a foster home.

They had received 3 poodles that were seized by the state; they were older dogs and I made it clear that I loved seniors (I adopted our first chihuahua at her age of 10 and she's my baby) and would gladly take one of them.

We're stocked with doggy stairs, pee pads, heatblankets and all-natural treats that can be chewed by almost toothless dogs so I was excited when I received another email saying that a 12-year old female was in dire need of a foster home since she'd been pacing so badly that her paws were raw and bloody.

In comes Lana. I went and got her right after work, not knowing anything about her. The people at the shelter had no information other than that she was seized by the state and was up to date on her vaccinations.

She wasn't spayed, she was very smelly, and had bits of poop on her fur, but at least her nails were clipped and her coat was shorn. I was given a bag of dry dog food and the adventure began.

Lana willingly went with me to the car where I gave her some duck breast jerkey which she ate on the spot. The car ride lasted only 10 minutes, and she was very relaxed, alleviating the worry that she would jump around and end up under my brake pedal since I didn't have a carrier large enough to accomodate her.

I let her out in the yard where she was very interested in all of the sights and sounds - that is until the cats discovered her. When she looked up, she was surrounded by 3 of them and ran towards them, wagging her tail and perking up her ears. Of course the cats didn't think that was funny and hissed at her - she yelped and ran to the other end of the yard. I then let the dogs out to meet her and that went relatively well, with Josephine, our 5-year old, being her grouchy old self and Lucrezia, the now 11-year old, being very shy and timid.

Josi defends her space and growls and snaps at anything that gets too close for her comfort, but she let Lana sniff her out, until she had enough. Lana was not that impressed with the growling and ignored it for the most part, earning a snap or two in the process.

I let Lana mark in the yard for a while, hoping that she wouldn't have any urine left to mark in the house since I assumed she wasn't potty-trained.

I was right - Lana came into the house and started peeing on selected spots that Luci, and probably every other dog that has ever lived in this house, have frequented.

Whoever invented enzyme spray should receive a gold medal!

One of the things I noticed immediately was that Lana had no idea how to climb stairs. She was very hesitant with the 2 steps that lead into the door, mastered the one step from the living room into the hallway, but then gave up on the main stairway to the second floor.

She also was hesitant to walk onto a dog bed, much less lie down on one. I just have to assume she never had one and that's sad.

But I had resolved to not dwell on the past and instead making things better in the future.

Since it was feeding time anyways I opened up the bag of dry dog food I got from the shelter. I feed my guys a diet of ground tripe and raw ground whole birds, but I didn't want Lana to have diarrhea so I gave her the dry food.

She sniffed it, tried it, and then didn't eat it.

I hadn't mentioned that she's about 7 pounds underweight and just skin and bones, so she must have been hungry. I checked her teeth and whereas the front ones showed some plaque, the back teeth were just one brown mass.

No wonder she wouldn't eat - she couldn't chew the food.

I watered down the kibble, ground it, and she ate.

I made the decision then and there to provide the food, cook a home-made diet to get her up to weight and health, then switch her a good quality wet food, just in case somebody did want to adopt a 12-year old, non-potty trained, unspayed poodle.

A bath was an absolute must, as smelly as Lana was, and she took it really well. Luckily she's small enough to fit into the sink and bathing was a breeze.

That evening Lana settled down on the couch with all of us since I couldn't get her to sleep in a bed I put on the floor next to the couch. The chis tolerated her for now and Hindenburg, the cat, even came to join us, so I thought there was hope.

At bedtime I fixed a comfortable dog bed next to my bed for her. The chis climb up the doggy steps onto the bed and sleep next to me, but Lana didn't know how to get up the stairs and I didn't know if she could hold her bladder all night. I put out a pee pad and thought she'd settle on the dog bed once she figured it out, but that wasn't so. She tried to climb up the side of the bed so in the end I lifted her onto the bed and she laid down next to my head.

She was quiet all night, once in a while lifting her head to see if I was still there.

Josephine, who sleeps under the covers next to my feet, sometimes gets up in the middle of the night to go through the doggy door into the yard, but that didn't bother Lana and all was well.