Your Patch Editor is a Foster Failure

We said we weren’t keeping him. We said we would never want a small dog.

It’s official, we’re foster failures. At least that’s the term applies to people like us who adopt their foster pets. We made it official March 3: is now officially Bruno Ernst.

This was the first time my husband, Mike—Mr. Patch— and I fostered a pet. We specifically asked for a small dog believing that we would be less inclined to want to keep a small dog. We’ve always had big dogs in our lives and thought small dogs were all yappy and high-strung.

Bruno changed our opinions of small dogs and wore us down with cuteness. That, and our 18-year-old cat seemed to like having Bruno around. How can you go wrong with a scenario like that?

The short-term plan was to foster a dog here and there to somewhat fill the void left by the loss of our golden retriever who died almost two years ago. We wanted to eventually be pet-free so that we had more freedom to travel at whim, but the more Bruno became comfortable in our home the more his personality shone through and the more we enjoyed him.

We’ve learned that a patch of sunshine on the patio is the preferred lounging location in the afternoon according to Bruno. But only until it gets too warm for him, then it’s a jaunt around the cool green grass in the shade. A thrown tennis ball turns Bruno into what Mr. Patch describes as “a little missile.”

Now that he’s ours, off came the little shirt that said “Diggers” on it, mostly because the way the word “Diggers” was written looked too much like it said “Dodgers” and that was just unacceptable in this San Francisco Giants territory. But do take note that Bruno now sports a scarf supporting my hometown Detroit Tigers. I actually bought the scarf for my cat from my sister-in-law in Michigan who sells them on eBay, but the cat didn’t like it so it belongs to Bruno now. Relax Giants fans, we’re working on getting him a Giants scarf, too. Then we’ll get him a San Jose Sharks scarf and a Detroit Red Wings scarf, and well, you get the idea.

Welcome Bruno, to the Ernst family and the Patch family!