This is Oscar

So cute you can barely stand it. That face, those eyebrows, the ears. He’s too much. But the thing about Oscar is that he is Dr. Jekyll in canine form. One minute, he’s sitting in your lap cuddling, the next he’s spinning around barking at everything and nothing.

Oscar is blind. We think not completely, but it’s hard to tell and we can’t exactly ask him. He definitely runs into his share of furniture, people, dogs, stairs, you name it. Sometimes it seems like he can see high contrasting colors - we have a light colored hardwood floor with a dark blue rug, and he’ll stop short of the rug at times. And then he’ll run into the snowblower. Regardless, he's got definite vision impairment that impacts his everyday life.

For a blind dog, he gets around okay, and has a top notch sniffer. We an usually hear him coming from the other end of the house - just constant sniffing moving down the hallway. His problem is not his blindness, but seems to stem from it: he spooks easily and that causes him to lash out at whatever is near him. That includes us, our other dogs, and inanimate objects. There's a post in our back yard that holds up the porch roof that has somehow affronted Oscar, and he now jumps on it and bites it  whenever he goes outside. He was similarly unhappy when the fire pit was moved onto the patio unexpectedly. We'll be needing a new cover for next season.

Oscar also has focal seizures that happen when he's stressed out. He will look like he's licking the roof of his mouth, or bark and move his head like he's trying to bite his own armpit. These are fairly short-lived, but they've been happening frequently since his move to our house.

We've had Oscar for about a week now, and he's beginning to get used to us and to his new pet siblings. My wife Amanda and I already had two dogs, four cats, and a rabbit before we decided to foster another dog. Some of our family and friends think we're crazy, but in our defense there are people who have 8 kids. This seems much easier.

Both of our other dogs are rescues - Chris came to us from Georgia when his elderly owner passed away, and Baxter came from Texas during Hurricane Harvey with a bad skin infection. They both have been a breeze to handle (although Baxter has his moments), so we thought we'd give fostering a try. The cats, Lucy, Alice, Ingrid, and Peanut, come from various shelter situations as well. Simon, our bunny, was abandoned on a walking trail with a carrot and luckily found by a passerby. We hadn't planned on expanding our home for wayward animals, but here we are.

We made the decision to foster Oscar because he urgently needed to get out of his former foster situation. He met our dogs and all seemed well, and he ended up coming home with us that evening.

This has been a stressful week to say the least, obviously more so for Oscar but for us too. We're not used to crating a dog, nor are we used to a dog nipping us, snapping at Chris and Bax, or having meltdowns when he doesn't get his way.

You see, Oscar is like a perpetual toddler. He has a temper tantrum when he wants something but can't have it. The tantrum manifests itself as a "Barknado" - a Tasmanian devil-style spinning accompanied by panicked yipping. While I know his behaviors are not the same as a temper tantrum, and that he's been through a lot for a three year old dog, it's a fitting description. If we're able to redirect his attention elsewhere, like moving him to another room, crating him, or taking him outside, he will generally calm down. At least for the moment.

Our goal at this point is to continue to learn and manage his triggers, and to keep him safely contained and comfortable. Hopefully he'll start to settle and learn our routines as he gets more and more familiar with his new, possibly temporary home.

- Erin