I just need to vent to people who understand. I’m very experienced with dogs and these breeds, I have excellent rescue support, and my foster dog is a really good dog who is going to get adopted at some point and be someone’s everything dog. I don’t really need advice, but go ahead and give it if you feel inclined. Except don’t tell me about pumpkin. I know about pumpkin, it’s not the cure all the internet thinks it is.

Here’s the vent.

We do occasional fostering and decided to take this guy on 2 months ago. Based on prior experience I really thought he’d be a fast turnaround: he’s young, he’s (ostensibly) healthy, no heartworm, ADORABLE, not too big, loves all dogs and people, crates like a dream. It’s been 2 months and no interest at all. The rescue says adoptions are really slow right now, it’s not him. But what I expected to be a basic house train and turnaround gig has turned into “probably get this dog through his entire adolescence”, which I was not really in the market for.

And…. The dog is a German shepherd and/or husky. Probably about one year old. If you know these breeds, you know. He needs to chew something about 14 hours a day. He’s really a good boy and will not destroy the furniture IF he has access to approved chewing items. But we are going through approved chewing items. He can totally destroy an “indestructible” toy in an hour. He can burn through an $8 beef cheek chew in a day.

Also he’s LOUD. Miraculously, he doesn’t really bark out the windows much. But he barks when he plays or wants to play, which is a lot. He back talks like a husky and has the voice of a large German shepherd. I’m not even sensitive to noise and can generally just sit there and let dogs run barky circles around my living room, but there are just times when I want his inside voice. I think if I were in a place where adding a young dog to my personal pack is what I wanted it would be no big deal, but I’m not.

(Short break to shoutout to our personal 2 year old husky mutt who is doing a lot of heavy lifting playing with him, which he mostly enjoys but sometimes even he looks tired).

And. He has a really sensitive digestive system. His poop at best is like a soft serve ice cream. He initially had giardia. That’s treated and retested. He had bad diarrhea 2 weeks ago. The pills they gave us didn’t work. The special food (“clinically shown to reduce diarrhea in 2 days”) didn’t work at all. Finally an antibiotic worked but now that he’s off it, things are soft again.

So this morning my husband is getting ready to leave for what was supposed to be a 1 day trip with friends that they extended to Monday without consulting him (he’s irritated but not enough to not go) texts me that the foster has diarrhea again, conveniently right when the vet closes. So now I get to walk 3 dogs myself all weekend (I have to do multiple trips because I can’t handle 3 at once), 2 of whom are high energy, AND be on solo diarrhea watch, including Monday morning which is a workday. To put the whole thing in hard mode we suspect the problem is the chew stuff he’s getting. So I did go spend $35 on an elk antler, which I don’t love but it’s that or my couch. I just feel like my entire weekend just got put into hard mode.

Oh, and we have a 2 week vacation coming up, so we get to pay the dog sitter for an extra dog (I don’t feel like I can ask the rescue to pay), and I really hope we get the poop in order before then.

I just feel overwhelmed and irritated and am regretting getting into this (except he’s a great dog and was on the euth list and deserves to live). And a little resentful honestly that eventually I’m going to hand this great dog to someone knowing that I took the brunt of how challenging these dogs are at this age, and they BETTER be deserving of that as humans, because FUCK I’m tired.