You’re Saving a Life
Fostering an animal will make you feel good, because you’re essentially saving a life. Foster pet parents provide space for animals in need of a home when the shelters are overflowing. While there are quite a few no-kill shelters and rescue organizations, many public shelters still euthanize animals if they can’t find a home for them quickly enough.
Even when the pet is staying with you at your home, it still belongs to the shelter or rescue organization. That means it can be adopted by a new family even though it’s not physically present at the shelter. Your job is to keep it safe and loved until the animal finds its new forever home. This could happen within days, but it could also take a few weeks or even months.
Your Other Pets and Kids Will Love It
Admittedly, some pets just don’t like other animals. But most cats and dogs don’t mind company. Having another pet in your home could make all the difference for your existing pet(s). Finally, there’s someone to play with!
Your kids will love it, too. Kids love helping others, including animals. When you foster a pet, it teaches your children a wonderful lesson in caring. They can even help you take care of the animal. Even young kids will enjoy cuddling with or playing with a dog or cat, because they can be fun companions. You just have to make sure to supervise animals and kids together to prevent potential problems or injuries.
Fostering Is Flexible
Fostering pets is flexible. It’s actually a great option for people who really want a pet, but are unable to make the full commitment. For example, if your family takes frequent trips out of the area or gets caught up in other obligations that prevent you from adopting a pet yourself, fostering can be a good option.
Fostering an animal will help you understand the time commitment involved with having a pet. It’s quite possible that you end up figuring out a way to keep a pet permanently after all. And if not, you can foster pets when you have the time, but you don’t have to accept any new foster pets if your schedule just doesn’t allow it.
Your Costs Are Covered
The biggest expenses related to having animals are medical bills. There are a lot of older cats and dogs and animals with certain health conditions that require medications and regular visits to the vet. When you foster one of these animals, you don’t have to worry about these medical bills. Generally, the shelter or rescue group will pay for the veterinary costs. In some cases, they’ll even reimburse the foster pet parent for other costs of fostering.
Happy Endings Make It Worth It
It can be sad to say goodbye to an animal who has lived with you for several weeks or even months. On the bright side, saying goodbye to one of your foster pets usually means that there’s a happy ending for the animal. It has finally found its forever home, where it will be loved and cared for. Of course, you’re going to miss the animal, but you can rest assured that it will be in good hands.
In some cases, you might find it too difficult to give an animal away. Fortunately, you always have the option to adopt the pet before someone else does. These animals are lovingly called “foster failures”. If the thought of this pet being adopted by someone else is too abhorrent, then you should take it as a sign and consider adopting it yourself. However, if you do that too many times, you may not have any additional capacities for fostering in the future.
Our rescue organization relies exclusively on foster homes, because we do not have a facility to keep the animals. If you’re interested in fostering an animal, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. You can fill out a foster application here or send an email to Jennifer.popowich@gmail.com to get more information.
No comments:
Post a Comment