We volunteer with an awesome organization called Animal Aid and Rescue Foundation aka AARF. They often work with animals that other groups pass over. These include dogs with illnesses or injuries that may be expensive to treat. It includes older dogs and dogs that are considered "less adoptable". They work with all breeds but most often large dogs. They work with a lot of pit bulls. They recently had a pair of guinea pigs!
We foster dogs in our home. Mostly we foster puppies since our older dog, Grace, isn't always friendly with dogs that she can't boss around a little. She's fine as long as dogs recognize her authority. Sunday will be the one year anniversary of receiving our first foster puppies, Diego, Marco and Indy. They are pit mixes and were about 9 weeks old when we got them.
It looks like we may be taking in a Catahoula Leopard Dog on Sunday. He will be our 23rd foster dog. He is coming all the way from Louisiana along with three other puppies. Zip is only about 8 months old and has spent about 5 months in the shelter. He will hopefully have a better chance of finding a home here in WA.
Right now we are trying to raise the money to have all of the dogs flown out here. It's going to be about $100 for each dog and maybe more. If you have any ideas for fundraising, let me know.
The most dogs we've had at a time was a litter of 6 pittie pups this past summer. That is in addition to our two dogs. It was somewhat hectic (pure chaos actually!) I'm not sure I'll sign on for that many again but it was worth it to save those lives. There wasn't anyone else willing to foster them.
We won't be taking any tiny puppies anytime soon. The last two babies we fostered had parvovirus and it hangs around the environment for up to a year. We've done massive cleaning but we can't be sure that we killed it all. It's just not worth the risk to little puppies without the protection of a full set of vaccinations.
Fostering dogs has been a wonderful experience for us. The kids love the dogs. We haven't had too many issues with them getting too attached. The dogs are usually with us for a short time and we talk with the kids a lot about their future homes. So it's never like the dog is ours.
I hear people say that they couldn't foster because they'd get too attached. I've not found that to be the case for us. I am an emotional person and it's surprising that I don't have trouble giving up these little beings but when I know from the beginning that the dogs aren't mine and I know that they are going to a great home it's just not hard to give them up. Besides, we can help so many more animals by not keeping the fosters-if we kept them all we wouldn't have room for more.
Deciding to foster is a life or death decision. Thousands upon thousands of dogs are killed each year. Foster homes are desperately needed. If you're interested, contact your local shelter, group or even me for more information.
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