By: Kristine Kennedy
There is a particular kind of story that begins with someone doing the right thing and immediately discovering that doing the right thing is far more complicated than they anticipated. Christina J. Donato’s Foster Freddy Wants a Family is that kind of story. She opened her home to her first foster dog expecting something manageable. What arrived was a beagle-basset mix with a dislocated knee, Cushing’s disease, recurrent mast cell tumors, territorial growling, a talent for indoor marking, a fondness for garbage raids, and lopsided looks that Christina, in a moment of honesty that takes genuine courage to put in print, admits disappointed her at first glance.
What followed was nearly three years of fostering, multiple hands of care, professional behaviorist interventions, and one of the most unexpectedly moving animal stories to come out of the rescue world in recent memory.
The Honesty That Makes the Book Work
Christina’s decision to include her initial disappointment in Freddy’s appearance is one of the most important choices in the book, and she is clear about why she made it. If Freddy hadn’t won her heart, she says, she wouldn’t have included it. She probably wouldn’t have written the book at all. But because he did win her heart, because first impressions proved so dramatically and completely wrong, the honesty serves a purpose. It shows that what we see at first glance tells us almost nothing about what we are actually encountering, whether that encounter is with a four-legged creature or a two-legged one.
The book is full of that kind of candor. Christina doesn’t present herself as a naturally gifted foster parent. She admits she was too soft with Freddy, that things went too far before she tried to gain control, and that she felt she had failed him when he was moved to experienced foster trainers Mandy and Donna. Learning later that Mandy said she had done better than she thought was what finally abated her guilt. She was a lifetime dog mom who was overconfident in her abilities, who discovered that fostering a dog with an unknown background requires being ready for things that love and experience alone cannot prepare you for.
The Moment She Knew She Loved Him
There is a scene in the book that crystallizes the shift that happens between a foster parent and their animal when they stop pretending. Christina chases Freddy and breathlessly confesses out loud that she loves him. She felt the change in that moment. She couldn’t deny that Freddy was a fully nuanced, warm-blooded living being. He wasn’t just a project. Not saying it out loud hadn’t meant she didn’t feel it. She still would have cried on transport day even if she had never spoken those words.
That transport day, the moment when Freddy faces forward without looking back while Christina weeps, is described by reviewers as one of the most quietly devastating scenes in the book. And yet she frames fostering around exactly that moment as the point. If you go in understanding that your purpose is to get to know the dog so they can be matched with the best forever home, then passing them along becomes a bittersweet but joyful moment the foster parent can take genuine pride in.
What Walter’s Words Meant
The book begins to take its final shape when Christina learns that Freddy has passed and reaches out to his forever dad, Walter. A beagle-savvy adopter who already knew a great deal about Freddy before taking him in, Walter saw past every medical bill and behavioral scar and called Freddy his favorite among eight beloved beagles. Those final words taught Christina something she needed to know: her time with Freddy had not been wasted. Everything she had put into him, the exhaustion, the stress, the guilt, the love, had contributed to a dog who was capable of being someone’s absolute favorite.
That is the happy ending she wanted to share. Not a perfect story, but a true one about hope even in what seems hopeless.
If you’ve ever wondered whether the hardest foster experience is worth it, Foster Freddy Wants a Family by Christina J. Donato is available now on Amazon.
