Fosters truly are the FRONT LINE for these animals & a critical step in saving more lives! A foster home is a temporary living situation for animals while they are awaiting placement in a permanent home. Foster families provide shelter, food, care, love, and guidance. The number of animals we can save depends entirely on the number of people who will open their homes and hearts to foster them. For some of these animals, this will be their first experience being treated as a family pet. You are their salvation and you should never underestimate the important role you are playing in their lives!
The only way that we can save animals is with the help of foster homes. Being a foster family has rewards beyond the essential value of helping a pet in need find a new home. For some, it is a chance to have an animal companion without making a lifetime commitment, or to try new companions for an existing pet. Foster Care is critical to our rescue efforts, the more homes we have, the more animals we can save. Becoming a foster family is a very rewarding experience, and can be a lot of fun. There are often tears shed when a foster finally finds a home of their own, but knowing you have saved a life and opened up space to save another is truly rewarding.
Fosters will keep animals an average of 4-8 weeks. Some pets need more time because of age, illness, injury, or behavior issues. Your time commitment will be discussed up-front before you agree to foster the pet, but most foster families keep the animal until the animal gets adopted.
What exactly does fostering mean? It means bringing a homeless animal into your home, caring for them, providing them with affection and socialization, until a permanent family comes along who will love them forever.
Many times rescues who have no central facility, rely solely on foster homes to determine how many animals they can pull from county shelters, who may be long term residents and/or at risk of euthanasia due to overcrowding. Shelters also rely on fosters to provide a change of environment for long term residents or those animals who may be having a hard time adjusting to a kennel atmosphere. Fosters are crucial to shelters and rescues ability to help expectant female animals, by affording them a quiet and comfortable atmosphere to deliver puppies and care for them in those first weeks of crucial development.
Often times, certain animals may not "show" well in a kennel environment due to excess energy, or jockeying for attention as potential adopters walk by. While fostering a animal, you are able to provide exercise and stimulation, which in turn creates a calmer animal in the kennel which in many cases may be closer to what their behavior will look like in a home environment. In addition, you can work with the animal on leash training, house training, or other basic command training, that potential adopters will find attractive when looking for the perfect animal for their family.
Shelters and rescues often look to fosters for those animals who may have endured a difficult past such as abuse, cruelty, neglect, under socialization, etc. As a foster, you have the chance and opportunity to gain a animals trust, show them human touch and love perhaps for the first time, provide an environment for them to feel safe, and watch them transform before your eyes.
If you have existing pets, introducing a animal can be a great experience for them as an additional companion, additional socialization, and an additional playmate! Children can benefit from fostering as a way to introduce responsibility, selflessness, a way to educate about animals, and is also a great way to "test" the idea of a permanent animal into the home in the future.
Fellow fosters from the same shelter or rescue will help guide you through the experience, give ideas, answer any questions, and may even become your friends! There is nothing quite like sharing experiences with those who do the same and being part of a community of people who have like passions.
When the day comes, that your foster finds that perfect home, the rewarding feeling you will experience is something very special. You will feel a sense of pride, in knowing what you helped that dog accomplish in his time with you. You will feel overjoyed, that he has found his forever family and his happy ending that all homeless animals so desire. And while certainly, some goodbyes can be tough, knowing that a animal has found his happy ending and that another precious life awaits to be afforded your gifts, is as good of a feeling as there is!
