00:00When Sherlock first came home, he was so frozen in fear that he couldn't even go on walks.
00:04He wouldn't walk, he wouldn't sniff, he wouldn't go to the bathroom.
00:07It's okay.
00:10The tuck tail.
00:12These are some of the biggest milestones I had the privilege of witnessing with my scared
00:17foster dog, Sherlock. Fostering misunderstood dogs has completely altered the way I look at
00:22progress. It has taught me to appreciate the more mundane moments because it truly means that a dog
00:28is learning how to be a dog. So instead, my routine quickly became picking up several pee pads and
00:35poop off of the kitchen floor in my one bedroom apartment several times a day. Definitely one
00:39of the least glamorous sides of fostering. Sherlock's journey really forced me to slow down and we took
00:46everything at his pace. Sherlock was so paralyzed with fear that for weeks I had to carry him
01:00outside just to go to the bathroom. We would spend very little increments outside and slowly increase
01:09them every day. I would walk him with my dog so that he could feed off of their confidence. We
01:17celebrated every tiny bit of progress even if it was just standing outside a little longer than the
01:24day before. Then on day 28 something incredible happened. So we're pretty much taking Sherlock to the
01:29same patch of grass and hoping that that helps him do his thing. So that's what we're gonna go do.
01:35Sherlock went on his very first real walk and it probably lasted 50 seconds but he was walking and
01:46he was sniffing and he pooped outside and I don't think I've ever been so excited to get pooped on.
01:51To
01:51anyone else it probably looked like the shortest most uneventful walk but to us it meant that Sherlock was
01:58finally starting to put the pieces together that the outside world wasn't so scary. And this is what
02:04I love about fostering scared dogs. They are such a great reminder that meaningful progress truly comes
02:11from these small little moments.
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