Sara 4

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Original: “She’s not actively playing with the resident dogs nor her brother but they all interact as though they’re part of a team.”

Sara and her littermate, Springer 3, belonged to an older couple from Pennsylvania.  When the husband died at 100 and the wife went into assisted living, their daughter took the duo in for a few weeks but realized that four dogs were just too many.  Since she’d adopted from MAESSR in the past, she knew just where to reach out to find her parents’ Springers a good home.

Taking in two foster dogs at once is usually a challenge but not with Sara and her brother.  She’s completely housetrained and crates quietly all night, either in the same crate as Springer or in an adjacent one.  Some Springer Spaniels are picky about who they’ll cozy up to.  Not Sara, who often flops on the same bed as the resident Saluki during the day.  Her foster mom isn’t sure she has a signal when she needs to go out, but she is fine with every four hours during the day and eight overnight.

During the day, this petite lady can be found flopped in an open crate, in a sunlit spot in the kitchen with her brother or the resident duo.  At night and when the humans are away, she’s crated along with her sibling.  They seem to like their cozy cave but are probably fine if not crated.

Too small to counter-surf, she doesn’t get into any mischief.  Her “thing” is that when she comes back inside, if there’s a stuffed animal around, she’ll present it to the humans and do a bad act of playing “keep away,” hoping the stuffy will get taken and tossed for more fun.  She’d love to flop on the futon while the humans watch TV, tucking her head or whole body on her person’s lap.  But since that’s supposed to be up to the new home to decide, she has to hang out in the kitchen with her brother instead.

Though trained to an invisible fence, she enjoys her small (1/4 acre) fenced yard.  She doesn’t think about jumping the 4′ post and rail. She did get out the gate one day, but came back in immediately when called.  Not a barker at all, she does enjoy chasing squirrels from the yard.  She ignores the birds using the feeders.  Inside her drafty old foster home, she and her brother like to help out with mouse patrol.  Foster mom was admiring how cute the duo was curled up on the kitchen bed one evening when she noticed a deceased but not chewed up mouse they’d put in the corner of the bed.  Who needs a mouser cat if you owned this pair!

Sara loves car rides, heading towards the Jeep when she’s taken outside of the fenced yard. She curls up in the back and doesn’t seem to get the concept of “stranger” when going into dog friendly places.  There’s not a sign of resource guarding out of Sara or her brother, either with food, toys or humans.  The duo will eat and drink out of the same bowls if need be.  She’s not actively playing with the resident dogs nor her brother but they all interact as though they’re part of a team.  She loves to be brushed and petted and doesn’t mind having any sort of physical contact.  At the vet for a rabies shot, she charmed them and stood quietly for the process.

Since Sara and her brother Springer are litter siblings and have been together for seven years, their foster mom thinks that it would be sad if they were separated at this point.  With a combined weight of 70 pounds, watching them interacts brings joy.  They should stay a set if at all possible.  They’ve been nothing but easy to have around, and if their foster folks wanted four resident dogs instead of two, they’d be staying where they are.