Animal Welfare League Offers Fostering Program For Animals With Special Needs
Animal Welfare League Offers Fostering Program For Animals With Special Needs
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Jackie Gorski-jgorski@timesuniononline.com
Animal Welfare League Offers Fostering Program For Animals With Special NeedsPeople who want to take care of animals, but may not be able to long-term, can do so as the Animal Welfare League has a fostering program to help animals who don’t fare well at the shelter or have special needs.
“Our foster program, we call it our first-aid foster, that is a program for those that are interested in helping us take care of animals that we consider special needs, like a mom cat with a litter of kittens, or a litter of orphan kittens or puppies, or animals that are recovering from a surgery or if they have a medical condition that just needs that one-on-one care. Or if we need help with an animal that needs help socializing and they’re very scared and the shelter environment is causing them more stress, so we try to get them into a home environment,” said AWL Executive Director Sally Scott.
In the program, people foster the animals for a certain time period.
Scott said the time frame depends on the need of the animal.
“With kittens, that could be an eight- to 12-week commitment, depending on how old they are,” Scott said.
Sometimes AWL has what they call “bottle babies” and they have to be fed milk formula every two hours.
Currently, there are three expert cat fosters, two expert dog fosters and several new fosters.
Foster parents do have first choice in adopting the pet if they choose to do so, she said, noting it happens quite often, happening a little over half the time, she said.
Scott said reasons for a foster parent deciding to not adopt the foster pet can include AWL has some regular foster parents who may not be able to keep pets in their home, but they can take of an animal, or the foster parent might already have other pets and can’t take in any more or they just want to continue helping AWL fostering pets. If a person decides not to adopt an animal after fostering it, Scott said once the first-aid foster period is complete and the animal is fully vetted and deemed healthy, the animal would be taken back to the shelter and put up for adoption.
As of May 13, AWL had five dogs and possibly over 100 cats, “a lot of them are litters of kittens,” Scott said. As of May 13, there were two pregnant cats that were in need of fostering.
Animals that are in the first-aid foster program are scheduled to come back to the shelter for things like spay/neuter surgeries or vaccines, which the shelter pays for. The shelter also pays for things like food.
For those interested in fostering animals from AWL, people can call AWL to get started in the process. Scott said the shelter will also set a time to talk to those interested about what’s involved, supplies and the schedule that would need to be followed, Scott said.
There is an application that would need to be filled out. AWL does interview those interested in fostering animals and ask them about their experience.
“We are currently in the works of creating an orientation program for those who are interested in fostering but have never done it before, getting groups of people together and talking about what’s involved, going over some tips and tricks, being able to ask some of our more experienced fosters questions,” Scott said. She hopes to implement the orientation some time this year.
When asked what the benefits are for fostering a pet, Scott said she thought a lot of people are drawn to fostering as a way to giving back to the community.
“For me, it makes you feel good about yourself because you’re taking care of something that would otherwise, without you, would have nothing,” Scott said.
On the shelter side, the benefits of fostering is that it allows animals to go to homes and frees up space at the shelter for other animals.
