Jack

Our new foster dog's name is Jack Daniels, but we are not going to call him that. To us, he is just Jack. Why would anyone name their dog after a brand of whiskey? Could that provide a clue as to why his owners are divorcing, losing their home and giving him over to rescue?

We got Jack about 24 hours after Zoe found her new home. It would have been OK to take a break, but no other foster was available at the moment, which meant that Jack would have gone into boarding until one came available. I hate to think of any dog in a boarding kennel, so I asked if I could take him.

Jack is a yellow Lab who turns 4 on Jan. 15. As with all fosters, Jack took some time to settle in. He got very worked up and was panting very hard until we decided to put him in his crate to let him settled down. After 10 minutes we checked on him, and he was dead to the world.

His owners assured us that Jack liked his crate, and he did go in willingly the first time. But when he woke up at 3 a.m. Sunday and needed to go out, he refused to go back into his crate. I'm sure an outside observer would have been entertained by the methods of persuasion I employed between 3 and 4:30 a.m. to try to get him back in, but it wasn't very fun at the time. :-(

I tried bringing him into our room, but after half an hour of trying to stop him from rummaging through everything, I went back to trying to shove him into the crate. He would flop on the floor outside the crate and not budge. I threw treats in there, and he would reach in with his paw while leaving the bottom half of his body outside the crate. OK, I can laugh about it now.

Anyway, about mid-afternoon on Sunday, after a lot of playing and walking, he finally settled down and took a snorey nap. Last night he was following us around the house and being generally adorable.

He's another one who never had much training, having spent most of his time outside, but he is housebroken and seemingly more socialized. The other dogs like him. He seems like a typical male yellow Lab: playful, goofy and active. About a 6 on the 10-point Marley scale, with 1 being easy-peasy and 10 being incorrigible.

I can put him up for adoption after having him a week, and I'm sure he will get a ton of apps because he's relatively young and super-cute. I will try not to get too attached to him...yeah, right.