Adopting and/or Fostering an Animal

When I was a finishing up my freshman year at Clemson, I started looking into adopting a dog. I thought it would be cool to have an "apartment dog" for my apartment sophomore year. I wasn't planning on actually adopting a dog until I got back to Clemson and moved into my new apartment that August. Just for fun, I started looking on Petfinder to see what was out there. Sure enough, I found the one. It was an accident really - I saw a picture of a cute little dog and wrote to his shelter, thinking if they had good things to say about him and he was still available in a few months when I came back, I might go ahead and adopt him. However, when I emailed them asking for more information about him, the response I got was heartbreaking..."Thank you for your interest in this dog. We do not know very much about him - he came in as a stray. We don't mean to pressure you, but this is a kill facility and his time is almost up. If you are interested in adopting him, please let us know."

Wow. That was enough for me - he had to be mine. However, there were a few problems:

1) I lived in a dorm.
2) I had finals coming up in the next few weeks.
3) He was in Tennessee and I was in Clemson.
4) I didn't have any friends who would be able to keep him until I could drive him home to Chicago.

But I couldn't let that stop me. I called the shelter and explained my situation. I agreed to adopt him (against my parents will) and, in turn, they agreed to keep him in a foster home until I could pick him up. It ended up working out well that I had to drive from Clemson to Chicago in a few weeks. They had time to get him neutered and I was able to pick him up in Tennessee on my way home.

Needless to say, he's been my little boy ever since. He is the greatest dog I've ever had and you can tell that he knows he was saved.

Unfortunately, not all dogs are as lucky as my dog Sunny was. For the dogs who end up in kill shelters, they may only get a short time before they are euthanized. And for those who end up in non-kill shelters, they may spend a good portion of their life in a cage, hoping someone will adopt them. It breaks my heart just thinking about.

Near the end of my sophomore year, I worked at an Adopt-a-Thon as a community service event for my co-ed professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi. Our job was to walk around with the dogs available for adoption while people looked and asked questions about them. There were probably a good 25 dogs there, but only 1 dog got adopted that whole day. Near the end of the event, a fellow volunteer was talking about fostering a dog. She had fallen in love with the dog she was holding onto for the day and said something to effect of, "my husband would get really mad if I adopted another dog, but maybe if I just foster her he'd be ok with it". Not really sure what she meant, I asked how fostering was any different from adopting.

I spoke to her and to the lady in charge at the Adopt-a-Thon and learned that when you foster a dog, you're simply keeping him/her in your home until you find someone to adopt him/her. That way, the dog gets out of the shelter cages and into a home. The shelter pays for all of the dog's medical expenses and food - all you have to do as a foster parent is take care of him/her!

Excited by this idea, I called my roommate and asked her to come to the Adopt-a-Thon. We decided we would foster a dog (after all, we were already paying the pet rent for Sunny) and took home a beautiful Golden Retreiver mix puppy. We watched him for a few weeks before he got adopted, but it was a great experience.

Watching them load all of the dogs back into the truck to take back to the shelter was sad. If I could have, I would have taken them all with me. However, I feel like I did my part by keeping at least ONE dog from going back to the shelter. Some people worry that they'll get too attached to a dog, but I think that if you go into it knowing that you'll be giving him away, it makes it a little easier. Of course saying goodbye is hard when you've been taking care of a dog for a while, but knowing that you kept that animal out of the shelter and were able to provide him a better life while he waited for his permanent family to come along...it's just priceless.

Once Ricky was adopted, I left to spend a year in Australia. I couldn't have a dog in my dorm there (and my parents were nice enough to watch Sunny for the year I was gone), but my roommate and I were planning on living together again and fostering another dog for our senior year. Well...that time has come! We're fostering now and we plan on doing it for the entire year. Once I graduate, I'll still do it for as long as I'm able.

Whether it's fostering or adopting an animal, the experience is incredibly rewarding for both you and the animal. I would recommend it to anyone who is able to do it.