Quite a number of people I know seemed to think it was crazy that I wanted to start volunteering at a shelter right away (about 3 weeks) after Yoda passed due to osteosarcoma.  My parents included, even though they knew firsthand that I did the same thing for several months after losing our family dog.  Everyone expected me to adopt a dog from the shelter immediately once I started, but my plan was to volunteer to cope until I had a few thousand dollars of a cushion saved up for any unforeseen medical expenses of a future dog.  Best laid plans right… but Gerry didn’t have time to wait and is worth all the “I told you so’s” that my friends and family are biting back.

I did almost want to title this post, “The Universe Attacks!” however, because it really was as if every possible circumstance was thrown at me to make sure I would take Gerry home with me.  Though, it should be noted, I am fostering him. I have not adopted him… yet.

I had been coming to this little shelter I’d heard about a year ago on the radio or something.  I had volunteered at the Dane County Humane Society the last time, but they take longer to get volunteers started, which is understandable because they’re so big.  This smaller shelter was able to get me started right away and after about two weeks, I think, they had a Doberman mix.  Unlike Yoda, he actually had the traditional black and tan coloring of a Dobe mix.  I haven't been shown his file yet, but the workers say he's about 2 years old.  He has a super long tail and his ears as well suggest he has some kind of hound in him.  I'm thinking part Dobe, part some kind of small hound, but I've been wrong before, and often you never can be quite sure what your adopted mix-breed's heritage is and that's fun too.

His name was Jerry with a J.  And it didn’t even register with me somehow, until I drove away that evening.  I have since decided to spell his name with a “G,” to avoid confusion with the Jerry.  But I still consider the Jerry, to be Gerry’s namesake - per the Universe - and what an honor!

That first night Gerry was there, he was one of the last dogs I walked.  He pulled to the end of his leash, but not very hard.  He picked up a leaf right away.  He loves to carry leaves.  He’s ever-so gentle with them, doesn’t chew or eat them, just likes to transport them.  After we had gotten a ways out, he turned and gave me that look with a super-waggy tail, that I had seen many times from the dogs at the shelter.  They're so love-starved they’re willing to stop in the middle of their walk for some lovin’!  So I knelt down to oblige and all of a sudden he lifts his left back leg off the ground and holds it there while I’m petting him.  Immediately, I find myself saying to him, “Dude, you don’t have to pretend to be a three-legged dog to impress me.”  Throughout the rest of the walk, I tried to convince myself that the leg thing was an odd quirk of his, like carrying the leaf, but now that my attention had been drawn to it I could see he wasn’t putting as much weight on his back left let, though he wasn’t outright limping.

So, when I got back, I asked one of the shelter workers about it.  She said they were aware, though noted somewhat ruefully that the shelter they had gotten him from hadn’t marked him as injured.  That managed to up my supressed terror that it could be a tumor.  She had said though that she had felt his knee (she’s also a vet tech) and it felt pretty clearly tore up to her, but they wouldn’t know how bad it was until he got in for x-rays in a couple days.

In time (an agonizingly long time, it felt like), it was determined to be an injury.  But he needed x-rays again to determine if he should have knee surgery, or whether it was bad enough to require an amputation.  Well, that broke me.  I knew they could only spend so much money on vet bills per dog to keep the shelter afloat, and I was afraid they would be concerned about his prospects for adoption if he needed an amputation.  So I told the vet tech shelter worker, to assure them he would have a home, that if they could manage to get him the amputation, I would love to adopt him.  What Gerry really needed, though, she told me, was a foster home.  I came to learn that Gerry was pretty severely claustrophobic, but I’ll save that for a later post.  He needed to be in a home environment for his recovery, and really needed to not have to be crated.

Now, for Yoda’s recovery from amputation, I used a lot of vacation time and we stayed at may parents’ house so that he would spend very little time alone.  I explained to the shelter workers that I didn’t think I could foster him, because I just started a new job, had virtually no vacation time, and would be gone at least 9 1/2 hours a day.  They’re response was that he just going to need to sleep all day anyway.  I still think it’s crazy.  The shelter workers have also tried to tell me that recovery would only take a week.  Ummm… by what measure?  I’ve been through this before folks.  And I’ve read about other tripawds’ experiences.  Anybody here have a dog recovered after a week?  In a way though, their telling me that just sold me even more on the idea that I had to take him.  I had a feeling they didn’t have another foster available, and even if they got one, it would probably be someone who didn’t know any better and would believe all their talk about amputation recovery being a breeze.  So with a dog sitter and parental help now and then, Gerry and I are going to get through this somehow.

Why else is this all meant to be?  Because the shelter’s vet knows an orthopedic surgeon from Ireland, who is in town on vacation, and has persuaded her to do Gerry’s amputation for free!!!  It has been scheduled for December 16^th and is my Christmas miracle this year.  In addition, I was PMing Pam about Gerry’s situation (I was a little paranoid about his vet care after they told me that week-long recovery period) and when I found out the orthopedic surgeon’s name, she was able to assure me that she is excellent and Pam knew her from the UW Vet School, which happens to be where Yoda got his amputation and cancer treatments.  Gerry is one lucky dawg!

Hopefully the stars will continue to align and one day I will be GerrysMom, instead of GerrysFosterMom, but that decision will wait until we get through his recovery.  Then I’ll weigh what is Gerry’s best interest.

So that’s how Gerry and I got started as a foster family.  I’ll update more on how it has gone soon.  For my next post, I plan to have a GerrysFosterMom username with avatar.  I’ll keep YodasMom as well for posts I make that relate to my experiences with Yoda.

(If anyone new is curious about Yoda’s story, there are many tales about him in the forums, but I would highlight: /forums/share-your-story/yoda/?value=727&type=9&include=0&search=2&ret=all , /forums/share-your-story/yoda/?value=727&type=9&include=0&search=2&ret=all ,  and  /forums/coping-with-loss/yoda-had-to-go-today/?value=727&type=9&include=0&search=1&ret=all )