[Dailydrool] Foster wins

[Elizabeth]

jjcsandrcs at aol.com <mailto:jjcsandrcs at aol.com> wrote: "Started out as a foster, then adopted a month or so later. They call that 'foster failure' which to me is a misnomer, cuz it's a victory.”

I wholeheartedly agree. The term “foster failure” has always bothered me because, to me, it implies the dog failed at something that was beyond its control. If anyone’s going to be blamed for failing, it should be the human. Yet, how can realizing the hound you’ve been fostering is just the right hound for you be seen as a failure in any way? 

Young Charlie could be called a foster failure. But if anyone had been in our home while we were fostering him, they would have immediately seen that he felt he was home and we were his people. There was no “fostering” in his mindset at all. So I was the one who failed at fostering when I told Ken wanted Charlie to be my birthday present and a foster no longer. 

That phrasing, “I failed at fostering," still has a negative feel to it, though. I think I’m going to go with “foster win” in the future. When Charlie, our first and only (thus far) foster officially became ours, I experienced a foster win. Doesn’t that sound much better?

Elizabeth 
(I’m a copy editor and semantics make all the difference.)
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