Hard Decision

My family had a big talk tonight & came to a decision regarding Tootie's adoption. Here is the email I sent to the rescue that has Tootie;

"We discussed at length tonight about everyone's feelings about our situation. We have a few concerns. The biggest one is regarding the decision making with Tootie's adoption. I do not think it would be fair to my kids to have Tootie stay another weekend with us if they have not made a decision about keeping her or not. If she stayed with us again, my kids would bond even more with her, leaving them heart broken if they decided to keep her. I can not do that to my kids. Although we can understand where Tootie's foster parents are coming from, we don't feel it's fair to our family to have this go on any longer. My hope is that our interest in adopting Tootie has made them come to the realization that they do not want to let her go & will agree to give her a forever home. 

Another concern is her reaction to people walking by the house. Tootie reacts because she is scared (not because she is aggressive). She displayed no signs of aggression, just fear, which can lead to lashing out or possibly someone getting hurt. We agree this can be worked on with training & was not a deal breaker. But for this reason we think she may do best in a home as the only dog & no kids. My family feels Tootie would thrive & do best with her foster parents. They are wonderful people & it's very clear to us how much they love Tootie. We have been foster parents to many dogs & felt that way about a few, which is why we took a step back from our feelings for Tootie & came to the decision that she truly would be better off staying with them. Tootie is happy & they are happy...and we just don't want to interupt that. It's not broken, so why try to fix it? There are so many dogs out there that need to be adopted. It's not that Tootie isn't a good fit for us, we just think she is a better fit for them. We have Tootie's best interest at heart & want what is best for her."

I hope this came across nicer than the thoughts in my head sounded. I just couldn't do the back & forth with them anymore. One day we were fostering to see if we wanted to adopt her, the next the foster parents wanted to possibly keep her. The communication was terrible. When the foster family picked Tootie up on Sunday after we had her all weekend, they made a few comments that lead us to believe they had decided they did not want to keep her. The very next day we were told they were still tossing around the idea of keeping her, but wanted Tootie to stay with us the next weekend again. I just couldn't have her stay with us another weekend & then find out the foster parents do want to keep her. How would that be fair to us, especially my kids? It makes me wonder, did they really just need a dog sitter? Were they planning on keeping her all along?