Saying Goodbye to Tony

Every morning I wake at dawn and start working for a few peaceful hours before everyone rises and the Farnival gets crazy. Our twelve-week-old foster puppy Tony has learned our rhythm and waits in his crate, watching me with his shimmering gray eyes as I grab a green tea and pull on my Uggs. When I unlock his crate, his tail whips back and forth, and he deliriously licks my face, puppy breath filling my nostrils.

I carry him down the stairs (although he’s learned how to come up them) and out to the yard, let him do his business. As we make our way back inside, Tony’s little chub-butt bounces behind me, paws pitter-pattering straight to the bedroom. He hops onto our footstool, then crawls into our king-size bed, nestling somewhere between Mason and the – at least – three other dogs cuddled against him. Tony wants to be with his pack.

In a few weeks, when he’s four months old, Tony will be up for adoption, and Mason and I will have to say goodbye to a dog that we started bottle-feeding at four weeks old. We’re the only family he’s ever known.

Last week, after I explained Tony’s story to Richarda, a kind, cheerful sixty-something- year-old woman sitting next to me on our two-hour plane ride from Denver to Nashville, she asked: “Don’t you want to keep him?”

When I answered no, it seemed to surprise her, but I explained that if I felt differently then all the good we’re trying to do could turn bad, and we’d be in danger of becoming hoarders.

Letting Tony go won’t be easy. In fact I’m going to have to build a fortress around my heart to do it, but that very process addresses the most difficult and ironic part of fostering abandoned and abused dogs. In order to continue saving animals, I have to harden my heart. I have to detach myself from the very emotions that compel me to help in the first place.

If we kept Tony, we’d have less space, money and resources for other dogs, and there are always hundreds of twelve-week-old puppies living on the street in desperate need of some TLC. Remembering that startling fact is difficult but necessary because it made saying goodbye to the thirty plus dogs we’ve already fostered possible, and it will help us say goodbye to Tony too.