Deciding to foster with our fear-reactive resident dog

Last Thursday we brought home our first-ever foster dog! Her name is Miss Batty (now dubbed Val by Sean, short for Valentine from the Ender’s Game series). She’s a bully breed mix recovering from both a broken femur and heartworms.

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Our resident blue heeler, Scout, is afraid of other dogs (you can read more about what we think led to her fear reactivity in this article, if you’re curious). After everything she’s been through—and all the progress we’ve made as a team!—asking her to tolerate an unfamiliar canine in her territory was not something we took lightly.

But while our cattle dog’s fear doesn’t exactly make fostering simple, we ultimately knew we were equipped to safely (and relatively peacefully) give temporary shelter to another rescue in need.

Here’s how we made our decision.

Factors we considered when deciding whether to be a foster home

A laundry list of things went into our conversations about whether or not to foster.

• How would fostering a dog—perhaps with unknown health or beha…