foster care for dogs

Fostering is such a wonderful thing to do! Rescue groups have a huge shortage of foster homes and desperately need them! Many private rescue organizations don't have a physical shelter location, so they rely entirely on foster homes for their animals. However, with those, the pets live in your home for several weeks, months or even years. I've never heard of a shelter that lets people foster dogs for the weekend, then return them to the shelter... but I think that's a wonderful idea! I volunteer with shelter dogs and when they're at the shelter for long periods of time they get so down. You can really see it when you look at them. Even just a day trip to an adoption event outside of the shelter where they're out of their cage and get a lot of attention from other people really perks them up! They're noticeably happier when they return to the shelter, and this extra spark they have is what often gets them adopted! I imagine it would be a lot more difficult to give up your foster dog to return to the shelter than it is to give them up to their new owners. If you think that would be too hard for you and that you wouldn't be able to do it, perhaps you could volunteer at a shelter on the weekends. Shelters are always in need of volunteers to walk the dogs, take them out, give them love and attention, etc. And rescue organizations often hold adoption events on the weekend that they need volunteers for. Someone to play with the animals, hold leashes, talk to potential adopters and answer questions. That kind of stuff. If you're interested in doing something like that, you may want to check out the website http://www.volunteermatch.org/ You can do a search for nearby animal rescue organizations that need volunteers. If you can't find any, you can contact local groups through their websites. Whatever you decide to do, you'll be making a huge difference!

Wow, this sounds like a great thing to do. I've never fostered a dog before, but I imagine it might be hard to give the dog back if you know it still doesn't have a safe home to go to. Nonetheless, dogs need love and attention and being able to care for it temporarily I'm sure would be more than worth it. As a dog-lover myself who is unable to have a dog full time, I think I'll check around to see if there is a program like this near me as well. Thanks for the good topic discussion :) and good luck!

I had thought about fostering pets for an animal shelter, or for deployed military pet owners, because while my husband and I miss having pets, it seemed crazy to get one now since we're moving cross-country in a year. But he was against fostering because he wouldn't want to give it back, so now we have a 6month old kitten from the pet rescue, and his foster owner seemed really sad to give him up. Fostering may have been more practical, but it really depends on if you can give up the pet.

I should imagine there will be the odd dog you really take to and struggl;e to hand back but if you go into it with your eyes open i dont really see the problem. It sounds like a really wonderful thing to do