Alisha has been fostering dogs off and on for about 10 years. The past couple of years with GPG, she swears she’s considered adopting nearly every single one at some point but always knew they weren’t the right dog forever for her family. That eventually changed…
In September 2017, she met the sweetest pregnant pup named Hollywood, who was a stray found in our service community. Alisha was set to foster two of Hollywood’s puppies once they had been weaned (around 6 weeks old), but on September 19, Hollywood went into labor, and things didn’t go quite as planned. Poor Hollywood was unable to nurse her newborns, so volunteers sprung into action to try and save as many as they could at such a fragile age.
Alisha had never bottle fed puppies before and reports that she felt super nervous about being trusted to keep these tiny babies alive! Because the puppies never got one feeding from mom, they missed receiving vital anti-bodies, making them much more susceptible to health problems. Alisha stepped up and became “mom” to two infant pups, one a beautiful little gray girl she named Lila.
Being a bottle feeding foster means having to feed them formula and help them potty every four hours! Lila was the smallest of the litter, had issues going potty, and it was difficult to feed her because she wiggled so much. Alisha worried about her and her brother constantly! Needless to say, she had the vet’s phone number on speed dial. It was quite the undertaking, but she tells us that she never regretted it for a second. Her husband was was there every step of the way, taking turns bottle feeding. It was quite the team building experience!
Raising a puppy from infant stage is such a bonding experience, and there was no way Alisha was going to be able to part with this beautiful little girl who stole their hearts from the get go. Lila’s brother was adopted by Alisha’s friends, and Lila become an official, forever member of her foster family just after Thanksgiving 2017. Lila and her birth brother love getting together for playdates, and she even enjoys trying (and sometimes succeeding) to get her adopted brothers to wrestle with her too.
“Lila has been the most wonderful addition to our family, and we are forever grateful to the amazing volunteers who saved our baby,” Alisha lovingly remarks. Thank YOU, Alisha, for your dedication to helping save lives with us!