Second Chances: Foxy Roxie the Boxy

I love each and every dog that I take into my care. It comes with the territory. Love alone can not heal them, but I don't believe that they can heal without it. I don't play favorites. As soon as a dog arrives, they are treated as family and along with the love, are given the same rules and boundaries that the other dogs have. This is the way we create and keep balance among the group.

That being said, sometimes a dog comes along that stands out. You treat her the same, but you can't help but feel a stronger connection. In this case, that dog is Roxie. Roxie joins Calista, Lincoln, Winston, and Bella in the elite group of "long-timers." These are the dogs that have been with us several months and become so integrated into our lives, that we forget that they are guests.

Roxie might just be the most fun dog that we have ever fostered (though you wouldn't know it because of my lack of posts!). She is a riot. She is smart and athletic and incredibly sassy. Although she is one of the "challenging" dogs because she is extremely high energy and has some anxiety issues, we have an outlet for her that we haven't had with the others. The pool. She swims every single day. She can't wait for Jonathon to get home from work to play fetch with her and she will jump in over and over. I bet she jumps in over 100 times any given weekend. If nobody wants to play with her, she drops her toys in the pool herself. She will clear out leaves and bugs too. And if there is nothing to retrieve, well then she'll just hop from floatie to floatie. Swimming drains energy like nothing else! The pool has been a godsend for working with Roxie.

She has come so far over the summer. I'm very thankful that she ended up in our home because she had some major issues with the other dogs when arrived. Behavior that would have tagged her as "dog aggressive" in the wrong hands. Dog aggressive dogs often end up in boarding (most foster homes have multiple dogs) and their problems only progress there. She wasn't dog aggressive. She just wasn't socialized and became overstimulated very easily. She wanted to interact and play, but play quickly escalated to aggression because she had no self control. She was young and we knew that with help, she would come around. And come around she has.  She loves playing with the others and will do so until she has worn both of them out.  She is able to play the extremely rough and loud boxer style play and she never gets out of control.  It would have been quite a shame for her to be mislabeled early on and not been given the chance to have dog friends.

In fact, one of her favorite weeks of the summer was when we she met her new friend, Winston. He stayed with us while his family was out of state. It was so great to have him back again! This was his second time visiting with us since his adoption and he still feels right at home here, which I love. He and Roxie really hit it off. They are pretty much exactly the same. Winston is Roxie, minus the attitude:-) They were absolutely non-stop for days. She pouted pretty badly the evening he went home.

She has had several adoption applications over the summer. Most were an obvious mismatch from the start. People are drawn to Roxie because she is a good looking dog but when you begin the evaluation process with them you discover that what they actually want is the exact opposite of Roxie. She had one local family that got as far as the weekend visit. They were a fantastic home (with a pool!) and any dog would be lucky to live there. Unfortunately, their older female boxer hated Roxie. She was a mild mannered, submissive girl, who had just lost her sibling and was still mourning. Her energy level was about a 4. Roxie is a 10+. So she came back to us. The family had already fallen in love with her and when I picked her up they gave me a donation in the amount of her adoption fee! More recently, we found another great potential home in Little Rock with three young boys. But, they had a kitten that Roxie was just a little bit too interested in so she didn't work there either.  We found that family another dog and they are going to start volunteering for us. Score! But still no home for Roxie.  With each hard-to-adopt dog, I go through a period where I think "We will never find the right home for this dog. Sigh." And then, eventually, the perfect family does come along. And my heart is inevitably broken.