Tonight my sweetie and I took the foster we cared for over the weekend back to shelter, 2+ years old

[Myrina]

17. Bless you ... fostering is an adventure, isn't it?

I've been a foster for nearly 5 years. Over a dozen babies have spent time at Camp Lisa - some as little as a week, some nearly a year. They all took a blankey & their favorite toy with them when they moved on with their adoptive families.

I cried when each and every one left & still get update emails/photos from them in their new lives.

2 of my fosters became permanent pack members: Max, the Blue eyed Boxer/Catahoula who went to the Bridge last weekend, was pulled from a high kill shelter (his person decided to relocate & not take him with. WTF is wrong with people like that??). Max decided within about 48 hours that he was never going to leave my house & became fast friends with elderly Bubba Ray LaBeagle, my #1 Dog Hank and was a welcoming playmate to the other foster kids that came thru the house. Not a mean bone in his body.

Porty P Bear was also pulled from a high-kill shelter and unfortunately had several strikes against him: huge (Chowbrador), black, older; he was a barn dog who likes to kill small critters, didn't really know how to act inside a house, and has chronic ear infections. But as long as you don't try to steal his food, or don't look/smell like a rodent, he's the biggest teddy bear ever. I realized after fostering him for a few months that he had totally lost his hearing from the infections not being treated by his previous a-hole owners so we started working on hand-signals (and he began to look to Max for cues). One afternoon Bear was on the floor alongside the sofa where I was laying watching a movie & he rolled on his back & swatted up at me as if to say "Hey woman, scratch my belly!" I decided then & there that he was home.

It can be frustrating, exhausting, thankless and heart-breaking to be a foster parent, but it's also the most rewarding thing in the world.

I tell people that while teaching them how to 'be part of a family', each of my fosters has taught me a life lesson about trust, adaptation, learning how to love and how to start over ... and for someone as emotionally closed-off as I am, that's been huge.