The need to give dogs and cats a permanent home is never ending. Pets are surrendered or even discarded and finding loving owners can be a huge challenge.
But there are angels in the form of pet fosterers, who provide temporary care and love to pets, alleviating the strain on burgeoning shelters and veterinary clinics. But what’s involved? Philip Pignato discusses what’s involved and required in fostering pets.
Why Foster and Not Adopt?
Most pet fosters parents are already animal lovers to their very core and have pets of their own (often several!). Adopting another pet full-time might not be possible for them, but instead they’re willing to care for a pet in the short term, until a permanent home can be found.
Fostering pets is often the best choice for an orphaned litter of puppies, kittens, or other animals who cannot survive without around-the-clock care. This is where foster parents step in: they’re willing to give their time until the animals are strong enough to be adopted.
Increased Need for Foster Parents
The rising cost of living all over the world, along with the fallout of the global pandemic, has resulted in more pets than ever before being surrendered to shelters.
To compound the problem, adverse weather conditions such as hurricanes and floods leave people and animals homeless, and while some agencies are happy to re-home humans, they’re not too happy to include pets, too.
For example, cities like St. Louis have recently put out calls for foster parents to accept pets into their homes for a short time, as they deal with recent flooding that has also affected local shelter facilities.
Fostering Benefits More than the Animals
The benefits of looking after pets aren’t only for the pets. While there’s no doubt that fostering an otherwise abandoned animal could potentially save its life, it’s an act that has major pluses for all involved.
Giving young children the chance to look after an animal goes a long way to teaching them about the importance of caring for others, and fostering can be the perfect scenario in which they can learn these skills without having the huge commitment of a lifelong pet.
It’s also a good way to see whether children would benefit from having an animal of their own, and this often works well when a foster placement becomes a permanent arrangement if all parties are happy to proceed.
Careful Consideration Required!
Just because fostering is usually a short-term solution, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. Those who foster animals do so after having counted the cost, both financially and emotionally.
A person that fosters pets may have to foot the bill for an animal’s medical bills, and this can be an expensive job if there are litters involved, or the animal is in its later years. Some centers cover medical costs but it’s not a guarantee.
The fostering home must be safe and suitable to house a pet, and careful consideration should be given to the other animals already in the home: they may not accept a new animal and it could be dangerous to introduce new animals without proper care.
It can also be tough to let go! Fosterers know that the animal won’t be in their care permanently so it’s not a job for those who get so attached that saying goodbye is too sad.
Ultimately, fostering pets, when all the factors are weighed up, can be a truly rewarding task that makes a huge difference to the animal, to local shelters, and to the fostering family, too.