How It Started and How It’s Going

It’s hard to believe, but it has been five years since we brought Mortimer and Charlie (then known as Malmo and Copenhagen) home as our short-term fosters.  They were so little!

They were only supposed to stay with us for two weeks to ride out Hurricane Florence and the aftermath.  But we couldn’t give these little guys back and risk them being separated.

So, here we are, five years later.  They’re still incredibly bonded. 

And we have no regrets over failing as their foster family.  I can’t imagine our family without these two.  

Throw Back Thursday - The Duke With Four Legs Edition

Those of you who are long time visitors here at Sweet Tea Reads may remember that our dog Duke started off as a foster dog, and that he came to us heart worm positive, and with a bum leg.

Saturday, October 20th, was five years since we brought Duke home.  The memory showed up on Facebook, along with the first pictures we took of Duke, back when he still had four legs.

It’s actually a little weird seeing pictures of him with all four legs.  He gets around extremely well, and just doesn’t seem to be lacking in any way.  Well, possibly manners, but certainly nothing he needs to live a full and happy life. 

We had Duke for about six months before his leg was amputated; long enough for him to get through the heart worm treatment, and become healthy enough for the surgery.   It was also long enough for us to become too attached to ever give him up, so he became the second in a long line of foster failures. 

Duke recovered quickly from the amputation, and gets around much better than he did before it, as you can probably tell from this picture of him at the Walk to End Alzheimer’s last month. 

We Failed. Again.

It’s the good kind of failure, though.  We officially foster failed and adopted Charlie and Mortimer. 

It only took them a few days to work their way into our hearts.  They’re so sweet, they get along well with the other cats, and are fine with the dogs.   I hated to think of them going back to living in a cage, and it broke my heart to think about them being separated.  I couldn’t imagine one of them being left behind if someone only adopted one of them.  So we adopted them both.

We now have six cats and two dogs; half of them were foster failures.  We’ve decided that we’re just not cut out for fostering.  I don’t seem to be able to let them go (Tara, Duke, Cookie, and now Charlie and Mortimer were foster failures), and it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to have any more pets.

We’re very happy with our newest additions, and everyone is getting along and happily coexisting, so we’re calling it good.  There are worse things to fail at.