I got my foster and I am so tired...

Well, I got a little Beagle guy named Jasper. They wanted me to take a pointer from another foster, but she was so high-energy I didn't think I had the energy to deal with her! Maybe after I am more used to this...

So anyway, I got this little beagle guy and he's a very loving, sweet little guy. He's totally attached to his people - ANY person will do, as far as he is concerned. He gets along fine with other dogs, but he's not at all interested in them. He also ignores cats. So far, so good.

Nala went nutty and wanted him to play but he wouldn't, so she barks at him. That gets old pretty fast, but once I get her calmed down it's manageable. Nala had the zoomies all over the yard this morning. I haven't seen her do that in ages.

Then Jasper found bunnies in our bushes at approximately 8am while we were outside peeing and he decided to give chase and bay at them. That was fun. But he IS a beagle, so what do you expect?

The one problem with this guy is separation anxiety. They said he was fine in his kennel at the shelter, although he was outdoors there. I put him in the crate to go home and he didn't want to go in, but he was fine for the ride. I tried to put him back in the crate several hours later so we could go out to dinner, but he wasn't having any of it! He was shaking and drooling and baying.

I set up an ex-pen for him with plastic on the floor, but I was worried that it wouldn't be stable enough if he went really nuts. So I decided to go with the crate. We canned the dinner plans and stayed home, and I practiced with him. I put him in the crate and would walk away and come back, staying away for varying intervals. The foster coordinator suggested giving him more time, so I left him in his crate to take a shower. He bayed for a little while but then settled down and was calm when I got out. But my son was in the room with him, although ignoring him.

So last night he slept all night in the crate in my daughter's room and was fine. Today I put him in several times and he was upset, but did calm on his own - but always with someone in the room. When not required to be in the crate, a lot of times he goes in on his own and sleeps in there.

So we put it to the test and we went out for dinner. We were gone for about 1.5 hours and when we got back, he had eaten half his bed and peed all over the crate. Poor guy! He liked that bed.

So I cleaned everything up and called the coordinator, but she thinks I should just give it another shot tomorrow even though I will be gone for a good 4 hours in the morning and another 3 hours in the afternoon! If only school hadn't started, the kids would still be home and there would be no problem. I can't take the day off work. And I am really worried that by just leaving him, I will be destroying any chance of getting him to accept a crate because we don't have time to work up to it slowly.

Anyone have any suggestions? There's just no time to work up to it. Do I just leave him and hope whomever adopts him won't want to use a crate??

 

Do you think giving him a stuffed kong might help? Can you get a DAP plug-in to try?

 

Well, I guess this proves my point. He won't even accept the crate to sleep in tonight. What little progress we made yesterday was destroyed by moving too fast and leaving him too soon today. Having him "try again" for 4 hours tomorrow is NOT going to be helpful for him! Don't they understand that this is not him trying to get his way but him being terrified?! And a dog with bad separation anxiety can seriously harm himself.

I don't know. I will call them in the morning, but I have to take my son to his college class in the morning and pick him up and bring him back to school. I can't bring the dog in the building with me. I am going to beg my boss to let me work from home tomorrow to try to resolve this.

He really needs a foster home with someone home full time who can work on densensitizing him to the crate. I'm not sure I am going to get along with this group, either. I should have known when I met the pointer who has been in foster care for weeks and doesn't even know how to sit. I think some of them train, but others don't. I thought the point of foster care was not just to give them a place to live, but to also help them become more adoptable so they can find permanent homes. The pointer should be trained to not pull or jump up and start to work on stays and other things that will increase her self-control. And this sweet little beagle guy needs a full-time mommy to help him learn to separate. He is scared to death of losing his new people. So now what do I do? Send him away? How will he ever trust again?

Maybe I can't handle this. How many dogs will I fail before I can help one?

 

it does sound like he needs someone that can work with him that can be around him more, dont give up though on fostering I would stress that with your work load and school now starting you cant take a SA dog.

Also you mentioned a female yoy almost got, is that wisewith 2 females, I have haeard ing general dont get too many females because it can cause dominance issues?

good luck

honeybear

 

I talked to someone different today. She was saying we might just have to bring him back down to the shelter. I tried to get him in doggie daycare but she said he has to be in a foster home for 10 days before they are allowed to do that. She doesn't have any foster families that are home full time, except for her fiance and they are going out of town soon. But then she called back and said he would take Jasper. He held him at the adoption on Saturday and fell in love with him as well. And they have worked with SA dogs before.

So I dropped little Jasper off this morning. Strangely enough, he was okay crated in the car. I'm going to miss the little guy.

Last night he was an angel. I slept on the couch and he slept on the floor next to me. He was quiet the whole night, and he never had any accidents. I think he is totally housebroken. He just needs someone to work with him on separation issues.

Well, tonight I sleep. On Saturday I'll go to the adoption and see if there is someone else I want to take home. There was a puppy last week that I really liked, but I have to think about whether I am up for housebreaking or not.

Honeybears, the female thing depends on the dog. Both mine are girls and they are fine together. They are both very submissive dogs. And the pointer is 9 months old so she would still have some puppy allowances I bet, although she's bigger than my dogs I think. She and Nala would probably play til they dropped. Might be good for them.

But a dog like that is a LOT of work. I know. I have one. :|

 

Here is Jasper's petfinder page: http://www.petfinder.com/pet.cgi?action=2&pet=4937267

And here is Bella's: http://www.petfinder.com/pet.cgi?action=2&pet=4872851

 

And this is the other puppy I really took a liking to. It was one of those things where you just gravitate toward a particular dog: http://www.petfinder.com/pet.cgi?action=2&pet=4937747

 

Fostering is hard, and finding a dog without "problems" isn't gonna happen.
Most dogs ahve a problem somewhere and thats why they were either dumped, or turned in to the shelter.

One thing about the beagle you could have tried was putting him in a "safe" room with nothing he could have gotten into, with some toys, the TV on and a fan.
Don't know why the fan works but it does.

Anyhow, I've found that the TV really helps, and it keeps him from feeling so confined for long periods of time.

 

Jimiya, that puppy is adorable

 

Sams, the TV was on and my dogs were in the room so he wasn't alone. The crate is one he voluntarily slept in when people were in the room. I also tried an ex-pen and put plastic down over the carpet and his bed in one corner. Again, he was content as long as he could see a person or even if he knew one was in the room. He had toys and things to chew on, but he didn't seem to know what to do with them.

His immediate reaction (besides drooling, shaking, and baying) when he panicked was digging. Left unattended in the ex-pen or the kitchen or the bathroom, he could have easily dug through carpet or linoluem in the 4 hours he would have been alone today. I thought about rigging a kennel outside, but he already tried to tunnel under our fence and left unattended I was worried he would get away. Also, my dogs would not be there with him.

I think the best solution for this guy is to have someone work with him on gradually desensitizing him to being alone. Unfortuantely, I am not in a position to be able to do that. I would gladly have taken the time and work to do it, except that I don't get paid time off from my job and I can't afford to not be paid for a week.

After he ate the bed, I tried using a towel that I had slept on in his crate. I tried tethering him outside as a last resort, but he started baying as soon as he realized I was gone. And the very last thing I tried before taking him to his new foster home was to leave him out with the other dogs, gated into their room. He started baying within 10 seconds of me walking out the door and there are simply too many things he could destroy or hurt himself with.

A dog in the grips of bad SA can easily hurt himself trying to escape. There was no safe arrangement I could make for him. He needs training or he needs to be in doggie daycare and they wouldn't let me do that. Drugs could help in the short term, but we couldn't do that either. The only thing I forgot about so didn't try was to use some Rescue Remedy.

He was a perfect little angel un-crated all night. As long as I was in the room.

I realize that no foster dogs are going to be perfect (except Bonnie, which is why I adopted her) but there are a few issues that I am not equipped to deal with. If I had a kennel with concrete floor as you do, then I may have been able to figure something out, although I would still be worried he would rub his pads raw trying to get out. I had a cat that did that once in a crate in the car, and let me tell you it wasn't pretty.

I have a few requirements for a foster dog. The dog has to be safe to be around my kids, my dogs, and my cats. I can handle a cat-chaser, but I cannot handle a cat-eater. I cannot handle a dog that is protective of me. Guarding food and toys, I can deal with. And the dog MUST be crate-able. I know my limits at this time, and exceeding them never works out well for either me, my family, or the dog.

Honeybears, the puppy reminds me a lot of Nala as a pup, except he has pointy little ears. Maybe that's why he gets to me so much. He also acted like a total sweetie in the store. But we all know that puppies can suddenly turn into terrors at a moment's notice! :shock:

 

Beagles are notorious diggers... poor guy.

how was he when nala and bonnie were crated and he was out?
Sounds to me liek he needs an older owner who is retired and home all the time and can love and care for him.

 

Nala and Bonnie are crated in my bedroom at night. There is too much junk stuffed into that room to allow him to be loose in there, not knowing him well enough. If I had kept him somehow, I was going to clean up a little and buy a bed for him and place it next to mine and I think he would have slept quietly just fine. I did try his crate next to my bed where I could put my fingers inside (like I did when Nala was a pup) and Nala and Bonnie were crated a couple feet away, but that didn't help.

When there are no people in the room, I think all thought flees from his little brain. It doesn't matter what else is going on - all he knows is that he has been left again.

Who knows if this is why he is in the shelter to begin with, or if it is a reaction to losing his home. Poor guy.

He really does need someone home full time. He was an easy little dog otherwise, if you don't care that he won't ever listen to you, LOL. But even people who don't work have to go out *sometime*. Hopefully his new foster daddy can work with him. He had an 80-pound foster for 8 months with extremely bad SA, whom they finally drove to North Dakota to deliver to his new home.

Jasper is just such an incredibly sweet dog. He silently looks up at you with those big beagle eyes and huge droopy ears. He sits where he can lean up against you. My son sat with him on the floor, and if my son moved Jasper would scoot to follow him. Jasper finally crawled into his lap and curled into a little ball. During the night last night, I would wake up and look down, and there he was, curled up at my side. He's a darling.

 

Jimiya, do you still have May issue of WDJ? there is a great article on crating, and it says not to crate SA dogs, and that they may be able to be crated later, but they have to overcome their SA thru beahavior mod first and recommmends place like doggy daycare if you have to leave the dog alone

 

ooh he sounds like a real sweetie. i think beagles are bad about sa and digging and eating stuff and running away. but they are so sweet. good luck, I think you probably did the right thing in the long un, maybe when they go on vacations you can watch him and he will be a little better by then.

 

Yeah honeybears, I did read that article and that's why I refused to crate him today. I was going to pay for doggie daycare but the foster coordinator said we aren't allowed until he has been in foster care for 10 days.

I think it is hopeful that he can be crated when someone is in the room. At least the crate isn't a problem.

I don't think I will be calling the first person I talked to about this for advice in the future. I felt like she was really trying to steer me in the wrong direction.

 

Apparently it wasn't just me. Jasper went to his new foster home. Apparently they didn't quite understand the situation, although I was pretty sure they did. He thought they had left the house at night and he scratched up two doors and ate some blinds. Later, he dug out of the backyard. They found him. In the morning, he was left in a room with their other dogs while the foster daddy went back to bed. The foster mommy checked on him in 45 minutes and the little escape artist had managed somehow to get the doggy door open and dug out of the yard again. They couldn't find him. He was picked up by animal control and they got him back from the local shelter. But he had injured his tummy or hindquarters and would howl when they picked him up. So he went back to our shelter and is waiting to see the vet.

I *told* them that he needs to be in sight of a person at all times or he would be destructive and totally panicked! I thought I also told them he tried to dig out of my yard. They said he doesn't have SA from a specific person because he doesn't know them, but he has confinement issues. I told her that he isn't choosey about his people, but he NEEDS a person (ANY person) to be with him at all times. Confinement isn't a big problem as long as he can see you. I got him to accept both the crate and the ex-pen as long as there was someone in the room with him.

Poor guy. Luckily everyone at the shelter is fond of him, so they are still hoping to find him a good home. At least they know his issues now. But it would be ideal if someone could work with him. I wish I still worked from home.