If you’re looking for a way to help animals, rescue organizations, and even families in your community, consider fostering! It’s an experience like no other. There’s a foster out there for just about any situation or lifestyle. It can be as simple or involved as you like. All you need is a little patience, a little space, and a lot of love.
1. Fostering Helps Increase Animal Adoptions
Every animal rescue that moves into a foster home frees up space for one the rescue wouldn’t be able to take in otherwise. It’s that simple. More foster homes mean more animals saved. Some rescues don’t actually have physical locations to house animals. They remove the animal from a negative situation — be it a stray, victim of abuse, pet in need of medical care, or pulled from an overcrowded shelter – and rely entirely on foster guardians to home the animals until they’re adopted.
Some animals come into the shelter in great physical and mental shape and can go up for adoption right away. They may not need fostering. However, the support of foster families who take in other long-term cases means more resources are available to quickly transition the ready-to-adopt animals. This reduces stress on the animals and the rescue organization.
2. Fostering Helps Increase Chances of Adoption Success
In some cases, foster homes provide a much-needed opportunity to see how a rescue animal will react in a home environment, before going up for adoption. It’s a chance to discover and work through any behavioral issues, provide training and socialization, as well as allow them to decompress and readjust before adoption. This can be the difference between a successful adoption and a return to the rescue. But don’t worry — you don’t have to be an expert in animal behavior to help a foster through this process.
3. Fostering Helps Rehabilitation & Recovery
For those willing to take rehabilitation cases, fostering is wonderful for animals going through medical recovery, resolving behavioral problems, or in need of socialization (learning how to interact with people and/or other animals, deal with stressful situations, manage emotional and physical reactions to different stimuli). Having a calm space, and someone dedicated to helping them heal, makes for a smoother and speedier recovery.
4. Fostering Helps Animals in Need
We tend to think of rescue animals as strays living on the streets and maybe finding a bit of relief inside the rescue facility. While that’s true for many cases, it’s certainly not every case. But sometimes owners may give up a pet if they feel they are not able to care for them financially. Sometimes elderly pet owners may find they’re unable to keep up with the physical demands. That’s just to say, there are many reasons why beloved cats and dogs find themselves in rescues. You never know what life holds.
5. Fostering Provides Pre-Adoption Assessment and Adjustment
It’s a safe bet that an animal in the rescue environment isn’t showing their true personality. Shelter staff conduct behavior assessments and get to know them as best they can. But it’s not always a 100% reliable evaluation with all the stress and stimuli of a rescue environment.
Move that animal into a foster home, and it’s a totally different story. As a foster parent, you have the opportunity to see what kind of lifestyle the cat or dog will thrive in, their likes and dislikes, whether they have any training or behavioral issues, fears, or special needs to be addressed. This insight is invaluable when the rescue organization is trying to place the animal with the perfect forever family. The rescue counts on these insights to find the best possible adoption match for the animal.
You’re also giving the cat or dog a chance to settle back into themselves, shake off past negative experiences, let down their guard, and become a family member again before they step into their forever home. The last thing anyone wants is for an adoption to turn negative and a pet to be returned. But it happens. Allowing the animal to flow through a foster home first sets everyone up for a more successful adoption and happy-ever-after.
6. Fostering Animals is Good for Your Health, Too
Those of you who have pets at home know there are physical benefits to having them around. Though it may feel like they raise your blood pressure when they’re particularly frisky, studies show that having animals in the home can:
- Decrease blood pressure, triglyceride levels, and cholesterol
- Several studies show heart attack patients with a pet at home survive longer than those without a pet
- Increase physical activity overall
- Lessen anxiety
- Lessen the risk of developing allergies and asthma in children
- Increase social engagement (or as WebMD put it, “Dogs are great for making love connections.”)
- And that’s just the beginning!
Whether you foster long-term cases, focus on healthy fosters, or work with those who have medical, behavioral, or socialization needs, it’s a way of giving back you’ll never want to stop. Fostering takes you out of your own problems to focus on the needs of another. There’s a sense of value and self-worth that comes from fostering (call it the selfish side of selflessness).
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Photo Credit: Javier Brosch / Shutterstock.com