Today is a bittersweet day at the Fox household – our foster pup Mr. Chance is now with his forever family, so we are down from three dogs to one!

To give a little background, we adopted our dog, Stella, from Safe Hands Animal Rescue in July 2015.  While looking for a dog, I started following several of the local Minneapolis rescue organizations on Facebook.  This means that while I’m catching-up on my friends’ lives (or let’s be honest stalking random people) on Facebook, often pictures/stories of dogs will pop-up on my newsfeed.  Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a bit of a softy, especially when it comes to dogs (just hearing that Sarah McLaughlin song brings visions of sad animals to my head and tears to my eyes).  I try my best not to get caught up in it, but the photo below and story from Secondhand Hounds broke my heart (don’t worry this story has a positive ending so stick with me!).

This was Chance’s “before” picture – he was brought to a partner shelter in Alabama with a skin condition, stab wound, broken jaw, and had his lips cut-off at some point.  I mean WTF is wrong with people?!  Unfortunately with situations like this they often don’t know where the dogs came from to prosecute the terrible people who do things like this.

So essentially I lost it (like, ugly cry lost it) when I read this, and after I showed Luke we decided we wanted to help this poor little dude.  There were almost 200 comments on the photo so I didn’t expect that my inquiry would go far.  But it turned out he didn’t have a foster yet AND he had a brother that was also looking for a foster.  So Luke and I went from having one crazy pup to having three!  Despite their horrible past, these dogs were loving and spunky from day one, and our dog Stella LOVED playing with them.  True proof of the forgiving, loyal nature of dogs.

We had Andy (now Bauer) for about a month, and he got adopted by my best friend and her family so the best part is that we get to continue to see him!

Chance had dental surgery on Monday to correct residual issues from his broken jaw and now is ready to be adopted.  Since last night was our last night with him, I made a puppy cake from Pinterest that was super easy to make!  He and Stella ate it in one bite (it was actually quite impressive) 🙂  Luke and I also got as many puppy snuggles as we could with him.

 

As I reflect on this experience, it’s funny how in the beginning Luke and I set out to help Chance, and in the end I feel like he gave so much back to us.  As cheesy as it sounds, I feel like he and I found each other.  He helped Luke and I find this love of fostering that has brought us closer as a couple.  He also is the definition of forgiveness and loyalty, and touched the hearts of everyone he met with his goofy ears and smile.

Although I’m going to like having a cleaner house, less “mess” to pick-up in the backyard, and more room in our bed at night (yes, he slept with us much to Luke’s dismay!), we are going to miss this sweet pup.

BUT he is going to the most perfect family and will get the life and all of the attention he deserves.  They asked if it would be OK if they sent updates on him – it took everything in me not to scream YES so I contained myself and casually said “yeah, that would be great” while beaming ear-to-ear. (Did I mention these guys are PERFECT?!)

 

We are going to take a break from fostering for a bit and give Stella some one-on-one love, then get back into fostering after the Holidays.  We also agreed our next dog is going to be a yippy dog we don’t like so the goodbye isn’t as hard!

Thank you Chance and Andy for making our first foster experience a memorable one, you will always have a place in our hearts!