My wife and I had our first go of fostering a dog a couple of weeks ago. A cute little bulldog picture here. We had hesitated to foster before because we knew that we'd grow attached and giving the dog to its new permanent home would be tough. For this one though, friends of ours were planning to adopt the dog, but just couldn't at the time since they were planning a wedding. So, we fostered for a couple of weeks to help take care of some medical issues for the pup (you can see from the picture here that the jaw was pretty messed up). Turns out though, that issue with his jaw was pretty tough for the vets to get an actual good look at because the swelling was so bad. Nonetheless, they took care of a couple infected teeth and drained a lot of fluids. Best guesses from the vet, and the rescue he was at, said that it was probably an abuse case and the jaw had been broken for a really long time. So, we got the teeth taken care of and brought him home with a smaller face and he was just fine for a while.
Our friends got back from their wedding and honeymoon and adopted the little pup, which they named Boudin (definitely deserving considering he really was such a little sausage of a pup, though I liked the name Meatball for him quite a bit :P). They took him home, got other vet appointments set up to monitor the swelling, and spent some time introducing him to their other pets to make sure they'd all get along just fine. And he got along super well with their other pets, a little pupper and a cat. He was a very sweet little sausage, though a slimy one with all the drool he let out. xD
I'm dragging along with this one because it's honestly kind of tough to get to the last bit, and I can imagine you understand where that's going. Our friends had Boudin for about another 2 to 3 weeks before he started having serious pain and refusing to eat. The swelling in his face returned and nothing they could do was getting it to go back down. They took him to the vet, got some painkillers, but were told the swelling was still just too bad to see what was really going on. Finally, they were able to get a new vet to take him, to try to reduce the swelling so they could do an MRI and get a good reading. Unfortunately though, the infection he had in his system just spread too much, his fever got too bad, and they had to do emergency surgery to make an attempt. The poor little guy had been through too much though, and he just couldn't keep going. He hit cardiac arrest while they were operating and the vets could not save him.
It was a really sad situation, and a tough one for our friends who were providing a loving him and for us to get so attached and lose a pup on our first attempt at fostering. Pets are a wonderful part of our lives, and they do nothing by bring joy to us (with potentially the few headaches when they're messy and don't listen as well as we'd like xD). Please, please, use this as an opportunity to be mindful of how you treat your pets, how much you love them, and to get help for them when they need it. I can't say how things are all over the world, but if your pet is injured look for shelters or rescues in your neighborhood and see if they can help. And if you have spare time, volunteer at an animal shelter or rescue near you. I'm sure the people and the animals would appreciate it; and I certainly would too.
