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by Suzyn Barron, President of Warwick Valley Humane Society, Inc.
Did you know the month of June has been designated as Pet Foster Month? Fostering a pet means bringing that pet into your home and giving them care and love for a set amount of time by providing them with food, water, affection, exercise, enrichment and socialization. Fostering frees up room in a shelter for other pets in need and provides a safe and real-life environment for pets to grow and become accustomed to a home setting. Fostering a pet also enriches the lives of both the animal and the humans who care for them and can be a challenging and very rewarding experience. Understandably, sometimes there are “foster fails” when the family decides to adopt their foster pet. This is “failing” in a very good way. Love happens!
The recent intake of five Great Dane puppies required us to come up with a new approach since they were not ready to be spayed until they reached six months of age. And we didn’t want them growing up in the shelter. We sought local “foster to adopt” families for each of the girls so they could be raised in a home yet remain under our domain until they were spayed. We were so fortunate that our plan worked! Five perfect large breed experienced families took each puppy home and fostered them through their surgery, finalizing the adoption when they fully recovered.
Currently we have two senior cats with long term foster parents rather than have them spend their homeless “golden” years in a cage. The shelter covers all medical, food and litter expenses as needed. We also have 3 special needs dogs with long term foster families. One dog was from a hoarding case causing severe emotional trauma, two others were surrendered with difficult behavioral issues. All are doing very well with these special people.
One of the staff fosters pets that need special attention to their care for as long as needed including kittens. Infant kittens require around the clock bottle feeding while those just eating on their own are still too young to stay at the shelter. We depend on staff and volunteers to help raise them until they are old enough to be adopted. Fostering these little ones can literally save their lives because they need more attentive care. Especially the young, un-socialized feral kittens who hiss, spit, swipe and can be scary despite their size. It takes extra time, patience and gentle persuasion to convince them to become playful pets.
Fostering a pet is not for everyone and that’s okay. It isn’t easy to bring a fostered pet back to the shelter after having that animal be a part of your family even for a few weeks. But knowing you have given that pet that steppingstone to a forever home is valued compensation along with the shelter’s gratitude. “You can’t buy love, but you can foster it.”– Unknown
Pet of the Week:
If interested in adopting or fostering, please contact the shelter at 845-986-2473.
Adoption applications are available to download at wvhumane.org under Forms and downloads.
