I just found out my foster dog I had for 4 weeks was behaviorally euthanized.

She did not have a bite history but did start to bark, snap, and lunge at people except for me. It would happen out of the blue, so I understand the concern. I had to return her to the shelter because of my own schedule and she couldn't handle anyone walking her except me so I couldn't have a dog walker come. I feel like I failed her and I am so incredibly sad. She was my first foster :(

The foster did call me when I asked for an update and let me know that she had passed.

I have been fostering behavioral dogs for 4 years now all with happy endings, until now.

I was given my current foster roughly 3 months ago. She is a beautiful 3yo Tibetan Mastiff that has a recorded (4) bite history with the county.

Her origin story is tumultuous in the sense that it is painfully riddled with poor assumptions made by her egregiously irresponsible owner.

He bought her from a breeder in Europe and spent $15,000 to have her shipped here to be his service dog, as he was terminally ill and felt it she would be good to have as a service dog.

Tibetan Mastiff’s are historically bred to be protective dogs whose sole purpose is to guard their family and their property. Due to her original owners terminal illness she was not properly socialized and in his care she had bitten 4 separate people. As a result he was forced by the state to surrender her to a rescue or have her euthanized.

Upon entering the rescue I foster through she was put through a month long board and train program that had successfully trained out majority of her behavioral issues.

She is not dog aggressive (unless they are aggressive to her), she walks perfectly on a leash, she does well being walked in public, and she knows all of her basic commands. She needs slow intros to guests in the house but has not had any issues in the slightest aside from the initial scary barks.

In mine and my boyfriend’s care her breed sensibilities do show in the manner of her being nocturnal, and electively sleeping outside during the evening hours (doggie door) in order to patrol the yard.

A family (mom, dad, 23yo son) had put in an application for her knowing her entire history and doing well with her on multiple meet and greets in my home, at adoption events, and at the park. They were counseled about her taking roughly a week with us before she got truly comfortable and had a meeting with her trainer as well.

She got dropped off at her new family’s home on a Monday at 6 and on Tuesday at 3pm I got a message that she had attacked their son and sent him to the hospital for stitches. Their story was very vague but it involved that the father and son were “rough housing”. The father had been the one feeding her and walking her so my assumption is that she felt like she needed to protect the one taking care of her the most. The family acknowledged it was their fault she reacted poorly.

We naturally took her back immediately but she had since developed a new behavior where she is getting dangerously close to being able to jump our 6ft fence and is now becoming aggressive with our neighbor and his dog when they are in their yard. We have barricaded the fence with different items but she is large and manages to push them over when she’s in the red zone.

After bringing up my concerns with the rescue they informed me that they were planning on telling me that due to her bite history, and the strong behaviors of her breed, they have deemed her too big of a liability to the rescue and that she will be put down this week.

Although I am shocked, I always understood this was possibility that I could not ignore.

We are not in a position to adopt her especially with our fence and our neighbor being her new targets of aggression. There are no other fosters within our rescue that want to take her on knowing her history.

I am heartbroken for her. None of this was her fault and all she has done is do what she is bred to do. She is a breed meant for a farm and not the suburbs.

This will be my first foster to be behaviorally euthanized after I have had 10 successful adoptions for dogs all with a bite history. I keep racking my brain on what we could’ve done differently to not have this outcome but I am at a loss.

TLDR:
This is my first time having my foster Tibetan Mastiff be behaviorally euthanized per directive of the rescues board (5 bites total on record 1 with my rescue), and I am heartbroken for her.

I have not yet adopted a dog. It’s still a ways out unfortunately because I require that I’d be as responsible as possible and have everything that I need prior to getting the dog plus an emergency vet fund and an additional training fund. But I have questions.

When you adopt a dog, what kind of things do you personally do with your dog while they’re still within the 333 rule thing? I would love to know what you personally do on like a generalized timeline. So like what you do within the first three days, what you do within the first three weeks, and then what you would do within the first three months. I would love to know also what you learned you should do versus what you do like your personal experience. I find stories of personal experience often holds more value than just looking something up on Google to me.

I also very much do not want to end up accidentally flooding and negatively affecting my dog when I do get one by accidentally doing too much too fast both inside and outside of the home.

Also, if you wanted to share pictures of your puppies, that would be so wonderful too because I love seeing dogs

I am fostering a small crusty dog and her babies. She has likely been bred multiple times in the past and has awful teeth and had come into the shelter with clear neglect and terrible matting (and trojan puppies, there was some sort of backup on spays). It's very sad.

She's also a total velcro dog. Wants nothing more than to sit with people. Very sweet. But she absolutely can not tolerate being left alone for even a few minutes. If I have to be out of the house for a few hours, I inevitably come back to a huge mess in the pen she shares with the puppies, with the pen walls all folded up. She'll track through the puppy pad (not for her, she goes out right before I need to leave) and get whatever is on it smeared everywhere; on herself, on the towels, on any toys, on the puppies even. She'll spill any food or water I've left with her. She's started to rub parts of her face on the pen to the point of irritation. We tried to let her have free run of the room when the puppies still couldn't get out of the pen, and she left deep scratches on the door if we left her at all. I think she's even trying to bite the bars because she'll have a little bit of bleeding from her mouth, but it's hard to say since her teeth are so rotten. She's always in a terrible state when I get back, panting and eyes wild, it's awful to see.

She's also really annoying about food. If we don't move her to another room when the puppies are eating she will pace and pant and try to get their food and eat it out of their mouths. It's really making the weaning process difficult. She is getting plenty to eat (and usually some of my cats' food too!)

She freaks out at 5 AM on the dot every morning. She will usually have a few periods of freaking out before that, but will settle herself. The 5 AM one is the one she doesn't settle from. Even if we take her out to do her business at midnight, she'll always need to go out at 5 am. She won't go back to sleep once we bring her in (and will bark and rattle the crate and hurt herself), unless we bring her to our bed. I'm not a fan of this because she is so smelly but there's not an alternative if we want to get any more sleep.

I take her on walks several times a day, and give her feeder puzzles. I've even started to work on some basic obedience with her (she was completely untrained) to get her brain working/tired. But if anything this behavior is getting worse as we are hitting the 3 week mark. I really don't know what to do. She can't get anti-anxiety meds until puppies are weaned and I'm worried about how the recovery for her dental work and spay are going to go even when she can have anti-anxiety meds.

I usually foster older puppies (4-8 months) and I'm excited to foster these younger pups (who have generally been great). I love training and socializing. But their mom is such a challenge. I know she has been through a lot and I'm trying to have some grace but I am frankly so sick of this nasty smelly anxious dog. I feel awful like I'm failing her and not doing enough for her, but I'm also so frustrated with her behavior. I'd probably feel better about it if I was less sleep deprived.

I am feeling so hopeless right now. A week ago, my seemingly healthy foster suddenly started having difficulty walking. After some false starts, he was eventually diagnosed with IVDD. That was a shock, and I've been frankly overwhelmed trying to educate myself on how to care for him and help him heal.

The worst part is he had a wonderful adoptive family lined up. We informed them of his diagnosis this week (we waited a bit to see how he would respond to treatment - very well, so far) and they just let me and the rescue coordinator know that they no longer plan to adopt. I'm so, so sad for my foster. He is a wonderfully sweet dog who has had a really rough start to life. Now I'm wondering if he's ever going to find a home.

I signed up to foster him thinking it would just be for a few weeks. He is small, adorable, and fairly young (2-4, best guess), and once I got him housetrained we all thought he'd be immediately adopted. And he was! And then they returned him less than a week later, because they decided they weren't ready for a dog after all.

Now he has IVDD and I'm worried he's never going to find a home. IVDD is such a devastating condition - honestly, as his foster I'm constantly debating asking the rescue to find another placement for him. It's stressful and overwhelming. What stops me is that I know he has nowhere else to go. And he's been living with us for 4 months! I love him deeply and I can still barely handle caring for him. I can't imagine someone taking this on willingly, having never met him, when there are so many other dogs looking for homes.

I have fostered dogs for years but I don't think I can do it anymore because of one of my resident dogs. I'm not looking for advice. I just want to get this off my chest to help process the grief I'm feeling.

I have two resident dogs and keep space for one foster. My eldest resident dog has been through about 5 fosters in our household, but she's had issues with the last and current foster. With the prior foster, my eldest would fight with her. I couldn't even identify the trigger when it would happen, so I ended up just always having to keep them separated. I had to get urgent care twice because of bites from stopping a fight. That foster took a little over a year to get adopted. I was so relieved when that dog got adopted.

A few months later I came across another dog in the street that needed my help. I took in the dog and enrolled it with a rescue with myself as the foster. My eldest and the foster were tense with each other but would respect their space. However, my eldest started attacking my youngest dog out of nowhere, and that would cause the foster to jump into the fight. After going to vet to rule out any medical issues as to why my eldest would attack the younger one, I hired a behaviorist for my eldest. The behaviorist concluded that the foster is causing my eldest to redirect and attack the youngest since the youngest is an easier target than the foster.

Today my eldest attacked my youngest out of where (they were outside in the back yard while I was indoors), which caused the foster to jump in the fight, and I jumped in to separate the chaos. I got bit so deep during the fight that urgent care had to send me to the ER. It wasn't a violent bite - whichever dog did it did a single bite and let go immediately likely realizing I was not the target. I'm okay but I'm so disappointed at the whole situation.

Now I'm just waiting for the foster to get adopted. It's been over a year and only one interested person. Once this foster dog gets adopted, I'm never taking in another foster until my eldest passes.

I'm just so sad. I've found purpose in myself by fostering, but I have an obligation to make sure my resident dogs are safe. It just kills me that I could help another dog in the future, but I have to step back. I could always donate more money to the rescues, which I'm sure helps a lot, but I also know being a foster is also what these rescues need.