Urchin Found his New Home

Update from Saskatchewan: Urchin has found his home for the holidays :)

He is being adopted by adopters who have adopted with Ocean Dog Rescue before and will have a canine sibling, two teenage girls to play with and doting parents. MERRY CHRISTMAS URCHIN!! I am glad you won't have to come back to foster bootcamp with us, though you would have been more than welcome.

And so that makes 28 fosters through our foster home in 2012 -plus an adoptee! That puts us at just over 2 dogs placed a month. Not too shabby. Officially this is our first full calendar year of fostering as well, since 2011 fostering started in March.

The New Year will bring new fosters, but for now I'm sniffling cause I'm missing my babies (who will be my 'babies' until/unless I have human babies).

Here is a silly picture of the three of them at the K9HQ Christmas party.

They're all my babies. So happy with each one of them and even in the future I don't think I would move to a single breed. I love Beckett because he isn't needy and isn't overly loyal and doesn't require lots of attention, but at the same time he demands my exercise and he's a fabulously stable dog. He is "the rock".

I love Lemon for almost completely reverse reasons. She's a needy little bugger with a bit of attitude to her, she is highly capable but not highly willing ----much like her mother!! She is friendly to the point of running off with almost stranger she meets. She's quite a 'soft' dog in many ways, but can be very stubborn. Most of all, she is a fantastic cuddler and constant companion. She's the "buddy buddy" dog. A lab in 11 pounds.

And Jinksie doo, though I haven't had her very long yet is already the willing one, the one eager to bond and eager to work . A different kind of dog altogether with an intensity I haven't seen matched in another breed yet. A dog with a different relationship want -neither like Beckett who would rather just be 'good roommates', or Lemon who wants to be your buddy and lap-warmer, but a dog who wants you to tell her what you'd like her to do. Sure she wants to settle after a good day of work and play, but she wants a working relationship with me.

I could be wrong, but having a couple of dogs who REALLY want a working type relationship would probably exhaust me.

Having the different breeds also emphasizes even more going forward in training that each human-dog relationship is different and requires a bit of tweaking on the approach of the training to get the best results.

Even about my babies though. I'll put a blog up soon with all the adoptees this year, but if you have an update for me about one of my old fosters, do pop it in to me. I would love to get some for Christmas :)

Best,
Emily