[Dailydrool] Foster failure

[Pamela McQuade via Dailydrool]

I will not count up how many times we have failed fostering or just 
missed out on doing so. The fact of the matter is, I do not figure that 
a foster failure is really a failure on either side. The dog gets a good 
home, and the humans get lots of love. Where's the failure?

Our latest failure was Horton. (Really, did Tri-State think it would be 
anything else? I doubt it. They knew Dexter would never leave us, even 
before we got him.) With Horton, I had publically proclaimed that we 
would not keep him. I felt that I was getting too big for my boots, 
thinking no dog could live without me. We didn't really need a third 
dog, I reasoned.

When push came to shove, I just could not let him go elsewhere. Was it 
him, working my emotions because he wanted to stay, or was it something 
inside me? Or was it really that Drew did not get me a Valentine's Day 
gift, when he is usually so good at doing so? I will never know. I think 
Horton was just meant to be here. However it was, Horton was my 
Valentine's Day gift.
Maybe instead of foster failures, we should call them meant-to-be-here 
dogs. It doesn't fall trippingly off the tongue, but it sure makes me 
feel better than feeling like a failure.

There is no doubt, Elisabeth, that if one of us did fail, it was not 
Horton. But I don't believe that failures work out as well as this.

Pam, food slave to the Dashing Bassets