Fostering Seamus

The potential adopter never came back for Seamus, so yesterday, we brought him home for a 3-day mini foster. I still have hopes that the big man will come back to adopt Seamus, but in the meantime...we are enjoying him in our home.

After the initial stress of coming to a new place, Seamus has settled down beautifully. We kept him on tie-down for the first few hours, but he earned his freedom to be loose downstairs quickly. He seems to make mistakes once but when we tell him "no", he doesn't do it again. For instance, he "marked" our chair in the family room, but I told him "no" and took him outside immediately. Now he hasn't had any more accidents. Same goes for counter surfing, grabbing and chewing blankets, and picking up shoes--he tried them all once but doesn't persist after being shown that it's not appreciated.

Of course, Cabana is thrilled to have Seamus here and is very good-natured about sharing everything with him--her beds, her ottoman, her antlers and toys, and her humans.

Amazingly, Seamus fits through Cabana's doggy door! He does have to hunker down a bit, but he seems to love the novelty of being able to go in and out at his discretion, so he does it often.


This morning, my husband and I walked Seamus and Cabana, with a stop at our favorite park, where we saw all our weekend doggy pals. I brought a drag line for Seamus, but he didn't even need it. He was GREAT with every dog he met, and he stayed pretty close by. If he started to venture too far, I'd call his name (which he doesn't even know very well), and he'd come running. It took me a year to teach Cabana to do that! Seamus doesn't know any verbal commands, but he's great about understanding what we want and so eager to please us.

Our dog park friends said that we should adopt him NOW and not fool around with this fostering stuff. One guy at the park even said we'd never hear the end of it if we don't adopt him, and he offered to take care of Seamus for us every time we go on vacation!

Seamus does get along beautifully with our family and especially with Cabana. I could easily love Seamus, but I'm not convinced about keeping him. After all, he's a great dog that anyone would love, and my goal is to find a wonderful home for him. More specifically, a home that is NOT our wonderful home!