What Happens When Your Foster Puppies Are Featured on The Dodo
In the spring of 2020, Renee and I were a Boston Terrier rescue. Medically fragile, special needs brachycephalic dogs — that was our lane. That was what we did.
And then Renee saw a post from animal control.
A pregnant pit bull named Emma needed a foster home immediately. Renee thought: well, we're a foster family. That's how these things go.
How We Got Here
None of this would have happened without Renee.
We wouldn't have Boston Terriers without her heart falling for Willa, the first one. We wouldn't have started fostering if she hadn't wanted to adopt Bocephus, our deaf Boston. And we wouldn't have Emma's story without Renee seeing that post and deciding that "Boston Terrier rescue" was a description of our focus, not a limit on our compassion.
Renee saw Emma. Renee said yes. That's how we ended up with a pregnant pit bull in a pandemic.
The Birth of the Quaranteenies
Emma arrived clearly very pregnant and very ready. Shortly after she settled in, she gave birth to ten puppies.
Ten.
We were living in a pandemic, going nowhere, doing nothing — and suddenly we were raising ten pit bull puppies in our house. We named them collectively The Quaranteenies, because it was 2020 and what else do you call ten pandemic puppies.
We went live on Facebook every night so people could follow along. Emma was a wonderful mother — calm, attentive, completely unbothered by the enormous amount of attention her puppies were attracting online. The puppies were tiny and squirmy and perfect and completely overwhelming in the best way.
Then The Dodo Called
The Dodo found us through the Rescue Ranch's social media. They reached out to feature Emma's story in their Foster Diaries series.
Their video went up and everything changed. The audience that had been following us nightly on Facebook multiplied. We were featured in our local newspaper — on the front page. We were on Atlanta news.
All ten puppies were adopted within days of their spay and neuter appointments. Emma found a home too.
Ten puppies. One mama dog. A pandemic. A Boston Terrier rescue that said yes anyway.
All of them home.
What This Is About
I tell this story not as a rescue success story — though it is one — but as a story about what happens when you say yes to something outside your lane.
Renee saw a dog who needed help. We weren't pit bull rescuers. We didn't have experience with large dog litters or large breed mama dogs or any of the logistics of what we were about to walk into.
We said yes anyway. We figured it out. And ten dogs are alive and loved because of it.
That's the whole thing about rescue. The lane is always a little wider than you thought.
