Fostering a pet for the holidays

[Mandalay]

There was a thread started about the movie/book "A Dog Called Christmas". I had never heard of it, so I went to the website. I started clicking links and came to this:

http://www.adognamedchristmas.com/Ho...8/Default.aspx

It is about fostering a pet from the local animal shelter for the holiday. Someone wrote into the author with this story:

Quote:
Dear Greg,

I am a veterinary technician in a busy animal hospital in Pensacola, Fl. I picked up your book and loved the story. At the hospital where I work, we had 37 abandoned, unwanted and repaired pets looking for homes. That is until I took your idea from the book and created "Foster a lonely pet for the holidays." The local news did a several day piece on the nightly program. It was amazing!! All of the animals were sent to a home for Thanksgiving and only 3 cats returned today; adoptions were done on the other 34. I thank-you for a great story and idea! We plan to do it again in a few weeks for Christmas.

So I ask the rescue people out there - are there programs like this that any of you are involved with? Have you ever heard of this being done by animal shelters?

[codmaster]

That is one [heck] of a story! And perhaps a great idea for shelters across the country!

[Chicagocanine]

It sounds like a good idea! I know there's something called 'Home for the Holidays' for pet adoption which I think is sponsored by Iams, but never heard of a fostering one like this.

I'll probably be "fostering" over the holidays this year because a friend's cat needs a place to go (it's a long story...) They tried the no-kill shelters but they are all full (put him on a waiting list), so he was going to end up in the pound otherwise where he would not fare well as he is a very overweight adult cat. So I will most likely be taking him to foster.

[RebelGSD]

Petfinder has a program like this.
It sounds like a nice idea, in general. However, holidays are stressful times, with guests etc., and that can be a challenge for existing pets. And potential foster homes would have to undergo the normal approval process. How long would they be fostering? A week? Most foster homes are not prepared to handle a GSD from a shelter, and for a rescue moving a dog into a foster home for a week may not be that helpful. Depending on the dog, it may be stressful.

[BlackPuppy]

They must be doing this everywhere. I saw one of the shelters in my area was on the news trying to get people to take a pet home for the holidays.

[dd]

The shelter in my area does this. The homes are screened ahead of time. In part it is to give the animals a break from the shelter, but it also helps the shelter staff to have a break with fewer animals to look after over the holidays. I'm not sure that lots of adoptions result from this, but I think it can be very helpful to animals with shelter stress to get into a family for at least a while.

ETA - The shelter is nominally "no kill" so the animals are not facing euthanasia once they have made it into the adoption program.

[Remo]

What is also helpful to the rescues around holiday time is folks that do respite fostering for the fosters who need help when they want to go out of town for the holidays.

Even if you are not prepared to be a long-term foster, respite fostering is one way to "get your feet wet" and get an idea of whether or not you are cut out for the job.