One of our favorite dogs we’d fostered over the years was a tiny beagle named Freckles. She was cute as a button and had an adorable personality. When Freckles got excited she would dance on our tile floor, nails clicking like tiny castanets.
Freckles radiated heat better than an electric blanket when she slept on our bed every night. The two biggest challenges of acting as her foster parents were keeping Freckles calm while she recovered from treatment for heart worms, and letting her go when the time came for Freckles to be adopted into her perfect forever home.
Years passed in a blur. Our own little island of misfits eventually grew into a permanent six-pack of large dogs that all lived inside our relatively small house, and we were forced to take an extended hiatus from fostering.
Eventually a couple of our oldest pack members crossed the rainbow bridge. Without warning, our sweet Husky Sasha suffered a fatal heart attack, and beloved Wyatt the Wonderdog succumbed to lymphoma, and eventually, sadly, we found ourselves with only two remaining pack members.
We didn’t immediately return to fostering because we’d moved since our days volunteering with the Humane Society of Forsyth County, and we were no longer actively associated with any rescue organizations, Then one day I noticed an email in my inbox with a desperate message in the subject line: “Urgent! Beagle stuck…”
That was all I could read without clicking on the link. Stuck where? Beagles are scent hounds, which means they will often detect and track a specific smell for miles. For this reason, beagles often get lost because they aren’t really paying any attention to where they are going. There is a large park with walking trails behind our neighborhood and thick woods with all sorts of hazards in which a dog could get trapped.
Yes, of course I clicked and opened the email.
The plea turned out to be from a volunteer with a rescue group called Angels Among Us, and the beagle was “stuck” on Death Row in a high-kill shelter. The poor dog had run out of time and would be euthanized the following day, unless someone claimed him. A beagle? I’d never met a beagle I didn’t like, and the familiar old urge came rushing back. I wanted to save him.
I only had one small problem. I was about to travel to my nephew’s wedding in California and would be gone for the next few days, but as long as someone else could take Ralphie in the interim, we’d be happy to take foster him.
Meet Ralphie. According to the intake vet for Angels Among Us, he’s only seven years old. However, he looks much older. In part this is because his face is naturally white, but also his teeth are in terrible shape. We were informed that Ralphie needed to have a cracked tooth extracted and asked to make an appointment at my convenience with a nearby veterinarian approved by the rescue group, which I did.
I was mortified when the vet’s receptionist called after the dental procedure to give me an update on his condition. She reported she’d had to pull six of Ralphie’s teeth, not just one. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a seventh tooth had fallen out on its own while she worked on his mouth. Apparently a sliver of chicken bone roughly a half-inch long had gotten wedged under that tooth and remained stuck there for God only knew how long, until the neighboring tooth was pulled.
“Six teeth!” I exclaimed. “How’s Ralphie gonna eat? That poor baby! Does he have any teeth left?”
“Yes, of course Ralphie still has teeth,” the young veterinarian assures me, without a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “Just not as many as he did this morning. He won’t want to eat anything tonight, though, because his mouth will probably be too sore from the dental work. Just give him pain medicine tonight.”
I picked Ralphie up at the prearranged time, and with a syringe and a bottle of liquid pain medicine, Ralphie and I headed home. I called my wife Lisa and gave her an update on Ralphie’s condition. Her reaction was similar to mine.
“Poor baby!”
I explained he probably couldn’t eat but worried that the little fella had to be hungry, after an early dinner the night before and having to skip breakfast for the surgery. Naturally, Lisa came up with the perfect solution: hot dogs minced into bite-sized morsels that Ralphie could basically swallow whole, which he did with great enthusiasm. From that moment, Ralphie forged a very unique and special relationship with my wife and tidbits of Hebrew National hot dogs.
Toss him one, and the boy never missed a catch.
Meanwhile, I questioned Angels Among Us about who had estimated Ralphie’s age. I was convinced someone would adopt him with the understanding that he was middle-aged instead of a senior dog, which I had assumed, given the seriousness and extent of his dental problems. I was reluctant to advertise the dog on PetFinder under what I thought might possibly be false pretenses, but then another vet confirmed Ralphie’s age really was “only” seven.
But they had been seven very long, hard years.
This boy deserved a life of luxury for the rest of his days, and I was starting to think that his perfect forever home might be our own.
One pre-approved set of applicants contacted me to inquire about Ralphie during his first month or so with us, but after a cordial and constructive phone conversation, the applicants and I mutually agreed that Ralphie wouldn’t be a good fit for their family–he wasn’t exactly what they were looking for, and every dog doesn’t fit perfectly in every home.
I decided that the vets had definitely been right and Ralphie wasn’t as old as he looked at first glance when he jumped over a low part of our fence at least three times his height and chased after me while I rolled our trashcans down to the street.
So much for the geriatric theory. Ralphie had a leap a young Superman would envy. All he was missing was the cape.
At least I never had to chase after him, and the only time Ralphie use his superpower to get out of our yard was to chase after me. He seemed to realize he had a good gig at our house, better than he’d ever known before. He liked me, he adored my wife, and he really liked hot dogs.
Lisa and I had pretty much decided Ralphie would become a permanent member of our pack. We planned to formalize yet another “failed foster” after the holidays by adopting him. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d decided a foster wasn’t quite as adoptable as we’d expected, and probably won’t be the last, but giving Ralphie a new life of spoiled luxury just seemed like the right thing to do.
We couldn’t imagine a family out there who would do a better job than we could. Plus, we’d only had the one nibble, and no other interest in him for a couple of months. We wanted to keep Ralphie, and we didn’t think anyone else would look past the signs of age his tough start in life had painted on him.
Then we got another application for Ralphie, out of the blue. This new family checked every box, including the one we couldn’t–undivided human attention, and affection without competition from several other dogs in a pack. The mom passed the phone interview with flying colors. I had to grudgingly admit they were an even more perfect fit for Ralphie and let him go to a more perfect home, because there is always a next one who might need our help, right?
The reward we received for rescuing Ralphie was greater than I could have ever imagined. It came in the form of this sixteen-second video of Ralphie in his new back yard, playing with a Boston Terrier puppy, and acting like a puppy himself.
Ralphie is home, and he’s happy.
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