Richard and I have been fostering for Passion 4 Paws since September of 2018. We don’t have children and our two dogs, Velcro and Rexi, were our entire lives. We lost them both to cancer 6 months apart. We were utterly heartbroken, but knew we couldn’t be without a dog for long. We weren’t ready for a dog of our own and only lasted a week before contacting Robin asking for a foster dog. Olsen was our first foster and we had no clue what to expect. Luckily, Olsen was probably the easiest dog to have as a first foster. Allyson, Olsen’s previous foster in South Carolina, Robin, and the entire Passion 4 Paws team, were all very supportive and patiently answered all of my questions (and there were a lot).
Fostering is extremely rewarding; we get the opportunity to love and spoil these dogs who desperately need us. They stay with us until their perfect forever family is found. We had our longest foster for 12 weeks, and our quickest was adopted within 6 days. We fall in love with every single dog and the goodbyes are always hard, but what keeps us going is there is always another dog waiting for our help. I tell everyone that it’s like Christmas for us year around. We get a new dog all the time and we never know what to expect. But watching these dogs transform from unwanted dogs to members of a family is the reason why we foster.
We just picked up our 10th. Ten dogs in ten months! If you’re on the fence about fostering, just do it. What do you have to lose? You’ll be saving a dog’s life.
