One Of The Best Feelings In Life Is Fostering A Dog

Other than owning your own dog, there is nothing more enjoyable in the animal world than fostering a shelter dog from your local shelter or rescue group. If you already have a dog at home, fostering a dog is still a great experience and greatly helps transition your foster dog into his new adopted home. It is an extremely fulfilling feeling knowing that an animal that you helped foster is now finding his new family.

If you're not quite sure fostering a dog is for you, here are some points to consider:

Time

Foster dogs are like any other dog, they don't need around the clock supervision but leaving town for a week or maybe even a weekend may not be possible. Sometimes you are asked to foster a dog for 3 weeks and sometimes it's 3 months, every dog is different and requires a different time commitment.

Types Of Fostering

There are different types of fostering you may be asked to do. For instance, you may be asked to care for a special needs dog with medical issues or maybe a dog with a behavior problem. You might be asked to care for a litter of puppies. You don't have to foster all of these types but there are different reasons for dogs needing fostered.

More Than Just Feeding

You may be asked to help a dog with basic training or maybe overcome a behavior issue. Or maybe the dog isn't house broken yet and needs to be taught. Fostering dogs you will eventually deal with some of these issues at one point or another weather it's fixing a chewing or excessive barking problem or maybe just teaching obedience to an unruly dog.

Maybe the dog you are taking in needs daily medication or is recovering from a sickness, so it is important to make sure you are home and knowledgeable enough to give him his medication. Also if you have other pets in the home you will need to make sure that your foster dog isn't contagious.

The biggest fear most foster parents have is falling in love with their foster pets and there is nothing wrong with that. It's only natural, your bound to fall for some of them but keep in mind that adopting your foster dog may eliminate that spot in your home to foster another dog in need. You have to keep in mind how many dogs your household can manage at one time with out being to overwhelmed, you may have to ask yourself "If I take in this dog, can I continue to foster?".

Without a doubt foster programs and families are crucial to animals and shelters. They help with the horrible over crowding and prevent countless animals from being euthanized. For most shelters fostering programs are there for dogs who are maybe a little older, are recovering from a sickness or were just born, animals that might just get put down if they didn't have a foster family to go to.

Even just a small amount of time away from the stress of a shelter can do wonders for a foster dog. It can change their entire disposition. Shelters are stressful and depressing for most dogs, being a foster helps take that away from them and hopefully make them a happy dog again.