Foster dog's bucket list

 If there were a GQ for dogs, he's be their poster boy.

Meet my foster dog.

Next month I will have been fostering him for 6 months.

Um, yeah, 6 months.

He is a special dog.

Not in the way of being special ed, but just special.

He’s especially large.

As in, I think I live with a pony.

I often want to buy a saddle and ask the neighborhood kids to come on over for riding lessons. I'd charge them $2 a ride and make a killing. They better bring their dorky helmets if they want to ride on my pony though.  Kids these days have to ride bikes with those dumb helmets that make them look like pumpkin heads charging down the street. Or aliens chasing after me on two wheels.  Oh my goodness, check out the freakish-looking Men In Black character coming right at me down the sidewalk.  Holy shit balls, that thing is going to come right at me and stick me with some sort of memory blocker and then I won't be able to remember what I'm doing walking down the sidewalk in the first place.    

 Oh you know, just Will Smith doting on a baby alien.  

Totally normal.  

Totes.

Kids of my generation just suffered massive brain damage and head trauma if we fell off our bikes.  There were no stupid laws about riding sans helmet.  We just rode around the 'hood helmet free and by golly, most of my generation is half-way functioning.  Well, save for those of us who sorta made the economy go in the tanker because we bought adjustable rate mortgages that we surely couldn't afford and then the banks blew to pieces and the government had to bail our arses out.  That wasn't me though.  I never fell off my bike and endured massive bleeding from my cranium.  The kids who did prolly are the ones who can't budget their money.   I don’t want some kid knocking on my door asking if he can take the pony on a spin if he doesn’t have a pumpkin helmet with him.  The wrath of that kid’s parents would scare me silly.

I digress (as I often do, A-D-D, hey --- did you see that purple cow…holy Moses, that was a purple effing cow!!!)

Back to the foster dog.

He is a goober. 

Totally all boy.

Totally loves the dirt. 

The mud. 

The rain. 

Totally.

I read an article a friend of mine sent me from the Houston Chronicle (yes, I still hate Houston in general), but the story revolved around a lady who fostered a sweet elderly dog.  She took her new foster dog to the vet and low and behold the animal was diagnosed with bone cancer.  Right then and there the woman decided her foster dog needed to have a bucket list and quickly solicited ideas. 

What an amazing idea for an animal who was once neglected, abandoned, mistreated.

My pooch was abandoned, left to fend on his own and was picked up running the streets of this large city by a shelter.  He was severely malnourished and had a horrid case of kennel cough.  His time was up and one day last November he was scheduled to be put down.  That’s when I received a frantic request to please foster him so that he too could have a chance at life.

And so I did.  I’m no hero though.  This dog is a true hero.  He’s endured mistreatment, living for months in a shelter, a horrible illness that almost killed him and then had to readjust to yet another home.  Plus he had his balls chopped off and if I were a dude, that would just be tragic.  And I was the one who took him to have them whacked.  Just thinking about that makes me hurt and I don’t have balls.  Ball are gross. 

And so for weeks as he healed we worked together on learning new boundaries, new rules, new commands and learning not to counter surf and steal food in the kitchen. 

And he deserves his own bucket list.

And so I am now soliciting ideas for this handsome dude.  Where shall we start?

• An hour at PetsMart to roam the aisles and pick out any treats his heart desires?  Budget set aside.  Because let’s be honest, PetsMart sorta inflates their prices, like a lot.

• A long ride in the car with the windows down driving as fast as I legally can so he can catch a ton of fresh air?

Send me ideas.   This pooch will appreciate it.