I have been a beagle lover since my teenage years when my family adopted a middle aged beagle from the local pound. We named here Sarah, and I have been a beagle addict from that day forward.
We got our first beagle Stella 7 years ago. We adopted her from a family that had bred their champion hunting beagle with another champion hunting beagle. She was a lemon and white cutey and it was love at first sight!
We adopted our second beagle Arthur 5.5 years ago. We got him from Ray's Beagles in Port Perry...Arthur is arguably the world's nicest dog.
I have long joked about having a beagle farm...a chunk of land where I could have as many beagles as my heart desired allowing me to offer a sanctuary for older dogs, sick dogs...all the misfit beagles that get disposed of once the cute puppy stage is over and the challenge of training the puppy sets in. That is not likely to happen anytime soon, so I started considering the idea of fostering a beagle in need. That's where Big on Beagles came in!
I have known about the beagle rescue here in Toronto for a couple of years. I have often browsed their website to look at all the little dogs that need help and we take our guys to the different beagle events that they run.
Marna - the amazing woman who single handedly runs the rescue - sent a notice around a week ago about a poor dog named Jerry. He had been abandoned, had cherry eye in both eyes, and was in rough shape. This guy was heartbreaking, so I drove out to the shelter to see him. Unfortunately he was too far gone. He bit me unprovoked, and he had obviously been mistreated in a severe way. Arthur, Stella and I drove home feeling very sad.
The next day Marna called to say she was going to see 2 beagles at another shelter. She emailed photos the next day and long story short...we became foster parents to little Albert. Our goal is to get him settled, trained and ready for adoption to his forever home!
This blog will document the journey of us rescuing and fostering Albert. I want to remember the experience, and I want others to learn more about the idea of fostering a dog in need. One person clearly can't adopt all the dogs out there who are down on their luck...but if more people would open their homes to foster dogs, it would make a pretty big impact.
