By: Schiamarelly Pinckert
Christina J. Donato did not set out to write an adult memoir. Her previous books for children had been about dogs too, including Grady, the dog at the center of her earlier stories, and she initially imagined Freddy’s story fitting into that same world. But when she sat down to tell it simply enough for a child to bear, she discovered she couldn’t. There was too much sadness, too much pain, too much heartache woven into what had happened. Too many children already live with those things, she reasoned. For the ones who don’t, she didn’t want to interrupt their innocence with so many cold facts of life.
So Foster Freddy Wants a Family became her first adult memoir, and in that shift, something opened up that a children’s book couldn’t have held.
The Real Cost of Fostering
What the broader public most misunderstands about foster caregiving for animals, Christina believes, is the assumption that it is primarily about cuddles and belly rubs. It isn’t. It involves basic training, getting to know an animal intimately, and being observant enough to notice undisclosed issues that may not surface immediately. Freddy’s health challenges were not disclosed upfront. His first tumor was caught early enough that his leg didn’t need to be amputated because Christina had been paying close enough attention to notice when something was different. She had learned to look him over regularly from head to toe, to track changes in temperament, eating, sleeping, and physical condition. That vigilance was not instinctive. It was learned.
She was a lifetime dog mom who discovered that fostering an animal with an unknown background requires a completely different kind of readiness than raising a puppy from the beginning. Being too confident in her abilities was the thing that caught her off guard, and the book is honest about that gap between what she expected and what the experience actually required.
Faith, Animals, and the Responsibility of Care
Christina runs Left-handed Author Publishing, manages her church’s social media presence, and weaves her faith through the way she understood what happened with Freddy. When she is caring for an animal, she believes God has entrusted them to her care. She takes that responsibility seriously. Her faith gives her compassion for all of God’s creatures, and that compassion is visible throughout the book in the way she describes her relationship with Freddy not as managing a project but as genuinely knowing another living being.
Freddy himself seems to have had a disposition that illuminates something Christina finds in Philippians 4, the capacity for contentment in whatever circumstances arise. Animals may have an advantage, she reflects, in not being weighed down by yesterday’s problems and tomorrow’s uncertainties. Freddy’s can-do attitude, his hammy love of cameras, his stamina during toy chases despite everything his body was going through, modeled a kind of present-tense joy that Christina found herself learning from rather than simply admiring.
What Freddy Wanted Most
When Christina is asked what she thinks Freddy wanted most from the humans in his life, her answer is specific and tender. Besides a steady supply of food and toys, she says, Freddy wanted a place in the pack. He wanted to fit in and stand out. He found it.
The book’s closing message, that family is not about perfection but about showing up messily, patiently, and with an open heart for a soul who wants to belong, was not a deliberate parallel to human experience so much as an automatic one. Christina never had children. Her pets have given her an outlet for her maternal instincts, and she tends to personify them. The lesson translated naturally because it is, at bottom, a human lesson. We all want what Freddy wanted. We all need someone to show up for us before they know the whole story.
The true story of a dog who wanted to belong and the people who showed up for him imperfectly and completely. Foster Freddy Wants a Family by Christina J. Donato is available now on Amazon.
