Brodie isn’t really sure how it happened. One minute, he was chasing squirrels around the backyard, pausing only to nap on his favorite corner of the couch. Then a revolving door of yappy, nippy, clingy foster puppies thrust themselves into his predictable world, impolitely snatching his toys, his mom’s attention—and that same spot on the couch.
Brodie is my family’s brilliant and tolerant ten-year-old border collie mix. His bedhead ears, tufted at all angles, make him look perennially rumpled. He also has a spectacularly curved, intricately fringed tail that just so happens to be perfectly positioned for teething puppies to yank and not let go.
As of this writing, Brodie has served as a reluctant foster brother to eighty-two of those puppies, coaching them through potty training, house manners, and the fine art of capturing a human heart. He impatiently instructs them to sit, bopping them on the head with a paw if they aren’t quick enough to put butts on the ground. He won’t snuggle, but he will allow his puppies to play with his toys. He growls (somewhat unconvincingly) if they come too close at dinnertime. When a puppy does manage to slip underneath him to snatch food from his bowl, he grumbles and looks at me imploringly, because he’s way too nice to nip them. His eyes say something along the lines of We could use some rules around here.
I fostered a few puppies before Brodie came along. Our only son was in high school, and I yearned for a sweet little living thing that did more than nod when passing through the kitchen. At the time, my husband, John, and I had an aging Jack Russell terrier named Crash, but he mostly spent his days curled in his well-loved pink blanket, basking in a shaft of sunlight and spooning with one of his favorite balls.
Sadly, Crash’s immune system was as badly worn as his blanket. Puppies often come with germs, and after two fosters and two respiratory tract infections, our vet sternly suggested we leave our old guy to dream and breathe in peace.
Then we adopted Brodie. When I first saw the little black-and-white puppy with an open gaze and those fluttery ears, I was smitten. He had been found wandering a back road in Tennessee, and the Atlanta Humane Society had duly dubbed him Gravel. With a herding dog’s agile brain and unlimited energy, Brodie was entertaining and goofy. He would race around the yard, pivot at the fence, spin wildly, and then double back. He vaulted into the pine straw, leaped over rocks, and tossed pine cones into the air. He ran circles around Crash while the latter dozed, hoping to goad him into playing.
Brodie, in the meantime, only interested Crash at nap time: The short-haired terrier, always cold, welcomed Brodie’s body heat. Otherwise, he ignored the younger dog as much as possible. Not easy with Brodie bouncing back and forth in front of him, wagging a toy or simply staring at him with little-brother adoration—antics that eventually came back to haunt him.
Brodie and I started fostering seriously right after Crash died and John and I became empty nesters. Our son left to attend Georgia Tech: by distance, only about twenty-five miles away, but in Atlanta traffic, potentially hours. I considered turning his bedroom into a puppy playroom, but the basement, with its cement floors, made for a better option.
We first fostered Fitz, an adult border collie who loved me protectively, growling at my husband or Brodie if they even stepped in the same room. Next came Pax, a gorgeous young border collie from a hoarding situation. He was feral, utterly fearful, and sick. Pax stayed five months while he learned to be a dog and recovered from heartworms. He became Brodie’s best friend as they romped, showed off their tricks, and napped together. Brodie loved him so much that I often think we should’ve kept him. But if we had “foster failed,” dozens of puppies would have missed out on Brodie’s tutelage.
When I became more active in the rescue world, I learned how many dogs are euthanized or spend months in shelters because they aren’t “perfect.” After about a dozen “normal” puppies, we made the switch to primarily special-needs dogs. Our first, a blind and deaf Australian shepherd named Whibbles Magoo, was astonishingly smart—he learned to sit and shake within minutes—but also a handful. He tore holes in the legs of all my jeans and raced in obsessive circles around Brodie.
After Whibbles found his forever home, I began fostering for Speak Rescue and Sanctuary, a nonprofit based near St. Louis that specializes in Australian shepherds and border collies with special needs. Many of their rescues are double merles. Breeders prize merle, the swirly pattern in a dog’s coat; if two dogs with a merle gene breed, however, there’s a one in four chance their puppies will be blind, deaf, or both. When a puppy is ready for us, Speak arranges a caravan of volunteers to drive it down through Nashville and Chattanooga and eventually to our home in metro Atlanta.
And so came Galen, a blind Aussie puppy with infinite joy who quickly mapped the yard, figuring out how to locate the house, fence, trees, and Brodie. Usually, he only ran into things once. Then he would shake his head (“I meant to do that!”) and continue frolicking in the opposite direction. (Brodie immediately realized he liked blind puppies because he could more easily hide from them.) Blind and deaf Gigi, a cuddly cocker spaniel, bounced on and off and over Brodie as if he were a fluffy trampoline. Blind and deaf Aussiedoodles Zane and Trudy made their way to us after an overflowing shelter had no choice but to accept them after their breeder threatened to release the siblings into nature, saying the coyotes could always use a meal. They challenged Brodie more—it’s trickier to evade two puppies at once.
At times, Brodie fostered three puppies simultaneously. His herding instincts would kick in as he rounded them up to take them outside or bring them back in. When he was younger, he actually seemed to enjoy it, showing off his twirls and his speed, ducking in and out of their reach as their shaky puppy legs struggled to keep up. But as he’s aged, we’ve changed how we foster, taking in Speak puppies with medical needs such as heart defects, orthopedic problems, or neurological issues one at a time. These dogs often require advanced imaging, surgery, and lengthy rehab. And because so many of them are tiny and on crate rest, they’re an ideal fit for Brodie: miniature and contained.
He napped protectively by the puppy pen as Charlotte recovered from double knee surgery, and later as Mandy recovered from open-heart surgery. He was gentle with two hydrocephalic puppies, Nellie and Zebby, who wobbled but still wagged their tails and followed him like ducklings. Neither puppy survived, but they knew human affection and canine attention in their short time here.
That’s the risk we’ve taken, Brodie and I, allowing these sweet and sometimes struggling little babies into our lives, making room on the couch and in our hearts. People who see our near-steady stream of pups often say they couldn’t do what we do. They say they could never let them go. But it helps to see the pups carried out the door in the arms of their ecstatic new person. And, as always, to be left with the company of Brodie, the very best boy.
