Fostering animals

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - Tears, smiles and happiness are all part of the animal fostering experience. There are so many reasons to consider fostering a deserving dog or cat and to tell you more about how you can help local animals is Candy Lash, Director of Community & Media Relations at the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society.

In Alabama, there is a woman and a man who were in their mind rescuing and helping animals, and in effect, ended up having more than 200 dogs and 31 cats on a 22-acre spread of property. The closer the dogs were into the house, the better the condition. As they were further out on the property, the worse their condition. The Humane Society of the United States went in and helped to rescue most of those animals, they were able to place with southern adoption centers all of the cats and most of the dogs. There were about 55 dogs that they had saturated their friends down in the south with most of the other animals, and so they were looking for additional help. We were contacted to see if we could take some dogs, and we were able to take 18 of them.

Some of the dogs were in pretty good body condition, some were emaciated. Some were extremely shy. All of them had skin conditions, some had heart worm.

Carline has a sweet disposition, as did all of them, which is unusual for hoarding animals to be so sociable. We guess her age to be six and eight years.

We have two dogs remaining from that case who need fostering. She is one. She needs to gain weight. She has as we mentioned, a host of medical issues, and so, we are treating her for those ailments, and would like for her to be in foster care. It can be foster to adopt or foster to have her come back to us for adoption.

Bottom line is fostering saves lives. In the case of dogs like Carline and others, sometimes dogs come in to our center who have been with a family all of their lives, and they are really nervous in a kennel environment. We bring them into a home setting, which makes it much easier for them to be adopted from that setting. At the same time, it keeps them emotionally happy and behaviorally happy.

Right now they need that effort. They need that extra TLC. For some dogs, kennel environments fine, but for others is torturous. Foster care provides them that opportunity to be in an environment that is more like home.

If you do foster a dog, you do have the option of adopting. It's not like if you get attached you have to give it back, you can keep them if you want to.

Our greatest need is with kittens that are underage or orphaned. If they're with mom, mom does all the work and family enjoys the kittens and mom does all the work. If they're orphaned, the family gets involved with the socialization of those kittens. We have bottle feeding fosters.

Depending on their age when they come to us what the needs are. Kittens need to be housed in a separate room, a bathroom, an office a very small area, but they just need to be separate from the other animals in their house.

It's just the interest in giving an animal a chance to save a life. If it were not for our dedicated foster families, we have been able to save 800 lives a year with our kitten adoptions, and that is just wonderful with our kitten foster families. It's a way to help animals in your community, a life saving measure, a way to enjoy the fun and frolic of animals without having to make a lifetime commitment.

It depends how long someone wants to commit to her. We'd like to see Carline in foster care for a month, ideally through her heart worm treatment, three months maximum.

For kittens, it can be as little as a couple of weeks to a couple of months. It really depends on the animal.

When we send an animal into foster care, we provide all the medical treatments needed. We ask if people can do it, to provide the food for the animal, but if they can't, we'll help them out with that, but we provide all vaccinations, medical care. Her treatment for both the surgery that she had on her ear and her upcoming heart worm treatment will be covered.

It's tremendous, and we can't do it without foster families. When we come upon kitten season, this is the time of year we start to see kittens giving birth, this is when we need care for our little kittens, right through the fall. If people are interested, we really encourage them to go online on our website or to give us a call, and we're happy to tell you more.

For more information about how you can foster a dog or cat in need, visit dpvhs.org .