It is a hot summer day, but the trees provide enough shade so that it is the perfect temperature.
We leave the car, and the doors close.
Side by side we walk up the stepping stones to the house. Two dogs are sitting in front of the window and are welcoming us with loud barking. We knock on the door. Nobody answers. We knock again. The dogs keep barking, but the door stays closed.
Suddenly, we remembered that we might have to walk over to a smaller house, close to the bigger one. Knock on the door. A friendly smiling lady opens the door, holding back a Bull terrier by her collar. She let us in and closed the door behind us. The dog she was holding jumped happily on us.
We follow the lady to a steel enclosure, over the linoleum floor where six small puppies scurry around and whimper. These six puppies and their mama are rescued foster dogs. The mama was found dangerously underweight with her six tiny puppies.
Fostering is all about love, time and attention to the animal fostered, so it is always a heartbreak to give them away to their forever home. On this topic specialized people, fosters, take them home and take care of them til they are ready to find their forever home.
It is like a rollercoaster ride:
A foster takes a new puppy, kitten, cat or dog into their home where they never know how long the pet will be staying.
Finding an animal’s forever home is very exciting but also can be heartbreaking for the foster owner. Often the little puppies and kittens, cats and dogs, are sick, were abused or are underweight. “A story about one of our fosters would be about the puppy Mimi. We took her to our home and everything was well in the beginning. But after four to five days, Mimi suddenly got really ill. We brought her to the vet staff at Harbor Humane for further testing.”
“It came out that she had an illness that kills puppies called parvo. It was good that we noticed it early enough so she could get the treatment she needed. Now she is happy in her forever home. I regret till today that I haven’t adopted her. She was the first and only puppy I really fell in love with,” Brandy Pyk, a local foster volunteer, said.
“I decided to start with fostering in Covid, during the lockdown, because there was not much else to do and I wanted to have the feeling of doing something and being productive, so I connected with the Harbour Humane Society,” Pyk said.
When people hear the word fostering, there might be a certain type of animal they think about, maybe dogs or cats, depending on which they like more. “Fostering I started with only dogs, because I’m a dog person. We fostered over 100 dogs and about 10 cats. Everybody else in our family was a cat person, so we took some in our home and took care of them,” Pyk said.
“Three of our foster cats we decided to keep and be the forever home for them. Two were brother and sister, even if they have really different characteristics. The brother of our third one was really sick and died. So we decided to keep his sibling and let him become part of our family,” Pyk said.
When kittens are healthy and socialized, they go back to the shelter. From this point on, the shelter is responsible for them and works to market and promote the animals so that they quickly will find a forever family and home, because they are susceptible to diseases.
Fostering is not just about helping and taking care of foster animals, like cats, dogs, puppies and kittens, but also about tying such a close relationship with them, that foster parents decide to become the forever home for their foster pet.
Also they get spayed/neutered to provide an overpopulation of animals. They go to a special adoption room, where future families can look at them, pet them and even hold them if they want.
For puppies there is another process: They stay with the fosters until the fosters receive a call or a message that there is someone who wants to adopt their puppy. The foster shelter organizes the meetings and the fosters go to the meetings with the future animal parents.
Being a foster can be amazing and really exciting, but no foster animal is like the other one. Some become social and trained really fast, others need special care and are timid or shy.
Those who foster need to have patience and give the foster animals enough time to adjust in their part-time home and get used to the foster. “When I take in a new foster animal it is exciting, but it can also be scary, especially if the animal is sick. But still, it is a rewarding journey,” Pyk said.
Fosters can actually decide which foster animal they want to take. “When I take a new foster animal, my foster shelter knows my preferences about animals and they help to match the fosters with the animals, their needs and their character,” Pyk said. This makes it easier for the fosters and the foster animals to adjust and get healthy and find their forever home.
If you ever want to become a foster volunteer, there are a lot of foster shelters, who will be more than happy to welcome you as a volunteer. Animal shelters often offer special volunteer training, like the Michigan Humane Foster shelter. But always remember, it takes a lot of time, patience and love to foster.
