72h into first foster and he already has an adopter… help
Hi foster friends. I am new to this. Title should read 48h, apparently I can’t count!
A week ago I’d never even considered fostering - I have an adolescent boy and a 15.5 year old dog who’s almost blind and has dementia.
We are friendly with the breed rescue coordinator and on Monday, she asked us to collect a dog from a lady who couldn’t care for him any more due to ill health, since she was only an hour from us. We didn’t have any foster training but I’ve had rescues before.
We arrived on Tuesday and it was very emotional. I don’t think I was prepared for supporting someone terminally ill in giving up their dog. She cried a lot but begged us to keep her boy.
Since then, he’s mostly settled with us really well. He’s a 2kg ball of fluff and all he wants to do is snooze on my lap. He’s a bit grumpy with our teenager but respectful of our elderly dog. He seems really attached to me. They’re all the same breed.
Today we’ve been asked to drop him off at a forever home, a 4 hour round trip away. We’ve only spent 48 hours with him and we’ve fallen in love, along with the emotional impact of the owner begging us to keep him. It feels so fast.
We really considered asking to keep him but we’d have wanted to foster for longer and allowed him time to decompress and to see how he fits in with our lives.
We took him to the beach tonight and it was pretty hard to meet the needs of all three dogs, considering the blind old man, the teenager still in training, and the new foster. And we were not even looking to foster or to get a third dog. But we feel so sad about letting him go to someone else. And I feel so so guilty about having to tell his original owner we didn’t keep him.
I think I’d feel better if we knew what kind of life he’d have with the new owner. Whether she can give him the best life for him. He would do well 1:1 with an older person who dotes on him and has lots of time for him.
- do fosterers normally get first refusal of adoption?
- do they get any say in who adopts?
- what preparation would someone usually be given for fostering? Ours was basically “can you take in a dog? Here’s the address”
- is it normal for fosterers to meet and have direct contact with the original owner? I feel like this has added so much emotional weight
And lastly… how do you know you’re doing the right thing?