Pet fostering
Many people would love to offer a pet temporary respite from life in a pen, and occasionally there are pets who would benefit from this, but more often we have pets looking for foster-to-adopt homes.
We are often approached by people who would like to foster our rescue animals and they are surprised when we tell them that we don’t often need foster carers for our animals.
Our main priority is to keep stress and disruption to a minimum throughout the rehoming process, so we prefer to settle our pets into a routine at the Shelter while we focus on finding them a forever home.
However, we do have a foster-to-adopt scheme which is designed to give our more difficult to rehome pets the chance to show their new families just how wonderful they are while offering maximum support from our team to make sure the transition is successful.
What is foster-to-adopt?
This scheme is typically offered with our pets that have some behaviour or medical needs that their new owners might need some help with initially. It benefits the new owners by allowing them to get to know their new pet in their own home with extra support from our qualified behaviourists and on-site team and gives them extra time to see if they are truly suited to the pet they are taking on.
Foster-to-adopt also benefits the Shelter as we can help pets with more challenging behaviour or medical needs get into a home while still giving our full support. It allows us to get regular progress updates and we can better tailor our advice as we work through any challenges with the new owner. We can give specific advice about the pet in that home, rather than generic advice based on what we think the new owners might encounter.
All we ask of the new owner is that they work with us and try their best to implement any behaviour or medical advice, that they don’t take on the pet unless they are truly committed to adopting at that time (we understand if things don’t work out), and that they keep in regular contact with us.
If you think our foster-to-adopt scheme might be right for you, we have some super pets who are waiting for the chance to show a new family just how wonderful they are. Head over to our rehoming pages where our foster-to-adopt pets are highlighted.
We will usually put out an urgent appeal on our social media when we have a pet in need of a short-term foster home. However, if you feel you have the right environment, time, and passion to foster a pet in need, please feel free to contact us for an application form on reception@gawa.org.uk