Hi. My Name is Foster.

Hi.
My Name is Foster.

You’ve met Taylor.

Well, I’m better than Taylor.

So there I was, half my body inside a large container full of food, and I gobbled and gobbled as much food as I could.

My dads had been starving me.

It was so much better at my Appachen and Ammachi’s house – my grandparents. It was there I started looking like Henry VIII. When I lived with my first dad Les, I was at my fighting weight – a solid 38 lbs. After my stint with my grandparents, I happily ballooned to 62 lbs. I was the round mound of rebound way before Sir Charles. I looked more and more like a little piggy. I was bold. I was big. I was beautiful.

And then it all changed. My cousin Jack left to goto Doggy Heaven. My uncle Cecil missed him a lot, and so after a little while my uncle George came to Indiana and whisked me away to Chicago from my grandparents. I was really excited for my new adventure.

That’s the thing about adventures. Every day is one, especially if you live your life that way. With that perspective in mind, every day will bring with it joy and going into it, you never know where it will come from, you just know that it will come. And so, I was about to live this adventure called Chicago. I couldn’t be happier.

And when my uncle George brought me to his home with my uncle Cecil and my cousin Kalib, I was now at my new home. Kalib was a giant, very regal and proud, the spitting image of my uncle George. And before long, I was the king of our new home, even thought Kalib was the king of the neighborhood block in which we lived. Pretty soon, my uncles became my dads.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. It was a lot harder than I thought. I no longer was given any potato chips or cheese or other scraps dropped on the floor.

My new dad George put me through boot-camp. He fed me less and we walked more. And then we ran. I really did not like this at all. Each day, I’d come home completely out-of-breath, cursing my new dad. Though by the time the TV was on and he was on the couch, there I was cuddling with him, or cuddling with my uncle Cecil. I was shedding weight however, and I did not like it one bit.

And so it was that one day my dads caught me stone cold with my paws (and face and half my body) in the doggy jar (er, food container). It was heaven. There must have been thirty pounds worth of food in there, and I ate it all… well, as much of it as I could. My dads yelled at me to get out. And I did. But I knew I had won this battle.

I lost the war though. I lost twenty pounds, weighing at a solid 42 lbs when it was all said and done. I was no longer a porker; but I missed my little piggy days and my big piggy ways.

I had fond memories of my time in Chicago before I moved to St. Louis and then to Philadelphia, but getting caught in the doggy jar was one of my favourites.

I’ve been to way more places than all my brothers and cousins combined; my grandfather says I have a passport and it’s been stamped a lot. I lived in Glen Ellyn and in a couple places in Chicago, IL. I lived in West Lafayette and Greenwood, IN. I lived in St. Louis, MO and Philadelphia, PA. All of my uncles and auntie and my grandparents at one time or another were my parents.

I’m in doggy heaven now; but you’ll be hearing from me again.