Out & About: Lacey comes to visit...

I've been so busy that I forgot about this post! Say hello to Lacey (formerly Ida), our first foster girl through New Rattitude. Lacey was up for the Pacific Northwest Rattifest. We never had any intention of fostering in fact we adopted Catty knowing she was going to be an only dog due to her reactivity with dogs. This issue was one of the reasons we adopted her. We were purposely looking for a hard to adopt older terrier. When I saw Catty on petfinder and she had the no kid, no dog, no cat tag I knew she was the kind of dog we wanted. Fast forward 4 months, I started volunteering for New Rattitude as an Adoption Coordinator and 6 months later we were fostering Lacey. She was brought to Washington from a shelter in Texas and was high heartworm positive and needed treatment. Because of her heartworm "load" she needed a quiet foster home to go through 2+ months of treatment of which the bulk of that time she would have to be crated/contained (a requirement during heartworm treatment). We figured this was a perfect fit, all of us and Catty could manage while helping out this really sick dog.

We'd never really heard of heartworms and we quickly found out way more than we probably ever wanted to know. Heartworms are nasty and they are 100% treatable with a monthly pill that costs around $3. I quickly found out why New Rattitude is more amazing than I had already thought. I started to get really freaked out that Lacey might die or if we were doing what we were suppose to be doing. One of the Georgia New Rattitude volunteer's sent me countless emails, spoke to me at length on the phone providing lots of great information while giving tons of support during the course of the treatment. I knew that when I was worried she would be there for me to answer my questions or basically hold our hand during the 2+ months. She really got us through more than she'll ever know and she's one of the reason we continued to foster. When you have this much of a support network who are all about helping the dogs and supporting a worried foster parent it's hard not to get bit by the "foster" bug!

When your first foster dog gets adopted it's really hard and given what we went through with Lacey I knew I was going to be an emotional wreck. Lucky for me, my mom was looking for a dog as her lab had died recently. She knew all about Lacey and what an amazing girl she was so it was pretty much a no brainer and while I was so thrilled I also cried once Lacey went to live with my mom. But, there was no rest for the weary - our 2nd foster arrived a week later and we haven't looked back.

We continue to be careful with bringing in a new foster dog because of Catty's fear issue's but, she's a trooper and she continues to amaze us! Way to go brave girl you too are helping to save a rattie life!