Diary of a Foster Carer

Dog Diaries reporter Bek Warnok has a very personal tale to tell…

A by-product of writing lots and lots of articles about dogs is that you inevitably stumble across sad stories about dogs in need. LOTS of sad stories…

So many dogs are abandoned every day and it is impossible to home them all. It’s a sad reality that many of the dogs that end up in shelters also end up losing their lives. Because the shelters simply can’t cope with the volume of animals in need while they’re waiting to be adopted, they enlist the help of foster carers to take care of the animals while they wait for their ‘forever home’.

Often, these foster carers have other pets at home and take on the care of these orphaned pets for days, months or years until somewhere more permanent can be found.

Doing some good
While I was researching another story for Dog Diaries, I learned about this process and, not having any pets at the moment but wanting to do something to help, put my name down as a volunteer. I expected that I’d be added to a database, perhaps emailed at some point down the track to assess my suitability. Instead, I was contacted that very evening by a wonderful woman who spends her life trying to stop pets from being put down simply because their owners are sick of them.

She had a little Corgie-Staffy Cross called Jasper, who really needed somewhere to lay his head. Jasper was deaf – and after a second’s hesitation, the reality of his situation hit me. He’d been put on the ‘kill’ list because of his disability, even though he was as healthy as any other dog in every other way… and he understood sign language!

With a quick muttering of ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ I sorted out a pick-up time. As I write this, it is the day before we meet Jasper, and I thought it might be interesting to document our experience together.

I’m not sure how long it will take to re-home Jasper – maybe this blog will help – but by sharing my experiences with the readers of Dog Diaries, I can hopefully shed some light on how people can help abandoned dogs in need of love.

Stay tuned… I’m off to buy some dry food!

Images by :Samantha Morris: and ryanknott