First Cut is the Deepest or Adopting your first foster out to somebody else

I stole Alfie from another foster. The moment I passed my interviews to foster with HART, I was given a choice of dogs to take home as my very first and here I was...eyeing someone else's warden! Alfie was found as a stray in Southwest Virginia, a beautiful mix of Saluki with something else. Wispy ears, gorgeous feathery tale, soulful eyes-I was smitten. Lucky for me, his foster was a kind young man by the name of Ambrose, who agreed I take Alfie "for a week" to see how it would go while he took another newly arrived dog from the van. I didn't keep Alfie

for a week, I kept him for three, fretting the entire time. Not that Alfie was a terror in the house or showed himself to have undesirable talents. Good God, no!

May 2008

Quite the opposite. Alfie was a PERFECT dog! Since at the time, I had no other dogs in the house, he immediately went to work on occupying my space, my time and at lightning speed - my heart. I even cried when I got a call that someone else saw him and was interested in meeting him. Begrudgingly, I agreed. A young Asian couple, with a little girl practically threw themselves at him, and what upset me the most, he - at them! My perfect dog was already falling in love with somebody else! I went home that day heartbroken. Kept going over the facts, looking for a reason they were not a match, but couldn't come up with any. Since HART gives all its fosters first right of refusal it meant a choice: adopt Alfie or let him go to his new family and new life. No matter how I fretted and complained I finally decided to let Alfie get adopted, so I, in turn, can become what I signed up to be in the first place: a FOSTER.