Welcome a Rescue Animal Into Your home
Fosters are the lifeblood of any rescue, and especially in ours! We are so grateful to anyone willing and wanting to open their home to an animal in need of their care. We are especially grateful to the committed and hardworking fosters who take on the tough and challenging, who sacrifice their sleep, who give of their resources over and over again, year after year. You are unsung heros!
We have dogs and cats of all ages, shapes, and sizes that are available to be fostered. We value our foster homes very highly and appreciate you for considering fostering with us! If you are interested, please read our requirements below then fill out our Foster Questionnaire.
Fostering Requirements
We are so grateful for everyone willing to foster, but in order to do our best as a rescue in caring for the animals we take in, we have best practices, protocols, and procedures that our fosters need to adhere to. If you foster with us, these will be made available to you.
We also have expectations on what you will provide at your home as a foster. Here are some of the biggest items we want you to be aware of before deciding if fostering with ANBAR or fostering in general is right for you and your family.
We also have expectations on what you will provide at your home as a foster. Here are some of the biggest items we want you to be aware of before deciding if fostering with ANBAR or fostering in general is right for you and your family.
HousingAs the foster, you need to provide a consistently clean, safe, and comfortable environment for your fosters. As an organization, we will do an initial home environment check before placing fosters with you. As you continue to foster with us over time, we may choose to do additional home checks to make sure the environment is still safe, comfortable, and clean. Cats and kittens need toys, bedding, scratching posts, dishes, towels, litter boxes, carriers. Dogs need toys, leashes, bedding, towels, dishes. No foster in your care over the age of 5-6 weeks should be living kenneled or caged. Dogs should not be kenneled for more than 8 hours a day and kennels must be large enough for dog to stand and turn around in comfortably. The only acceptable reasons for kenneling a cat or dog is if they are very sick and you have no other isolation option, they are recovering from a surgery, or they have a broken bone that needs time to heal with little movement.
Basic CareYou will be responsible for making sure the animals in your care have access to clean water, nutritious food, clean litter boxes (or picked up dog waste) every day. You are expected to pay attention to your foster on a daily basis. This means play time, socialization, spending time near them, loving them, going for walks (dogs), and noticing right away if your foster is getting sick. If you are seeing signs of sickness (most common in orphaned kittens or puppies) you are expected to use your skills as a foster to get right on it by helping the animal immediately and reaching out to your foster coordinator asap to let them know and seek any advice, medicines, veterinary care that might be needed.
AdoptionsYou will be required to bring all adoptable animals in your care into weekly adoptions at the Layton, UT Petco. You need to arrive by 11:45am and be back by 4pm to pick up any fosters who did not get adopted. Your animals must be healthy – do not bring them if they have eye infections, runny noses, sneezing, or running fevers or vomiting. Your animals must be clean – if your animals smell dirty or look dirty, they will be less desirable to potential adopters and reflect poorly on the rescue. If you consistently do not bring your animals to adoptions and they aren’t getting adopted out from your home via Petfinder bios, after the animal has been in your care for 6 months, by default you are adopting the animal. This policy does not apply to foster animals who are being brought to adoptions regularly but struggling to find their forever home.
Vaccinations/Getting Fixed/MedicalYou are responsible for getting your fosters in for vaccinations as soon as they are ready (adults right away, nursing mamas when babies are at least 4 weeks old or older, and kittens/puppies at 6 weeks old if healthy) and be able to return for booster vaccinations within 3-4 weeks. You will need to transport them to get fixed and then pick them up afterward and look out for the animal during the healing process. If medication is prescribed either by the Medical Director of ANBAR or by a veterinarian, you are responsible to make sure the medication dosages given are correctly, at the right times, and finished out appropriately.
SocializingYou are responsible for giving the animal love and helping them overcome any fear or shyness they have. Additionally, you will be responsible for helping train them out of any negative behaviors (we will offer support and best practices). We want our foster animals to be highly adoptable. Highly adoptable animals are loving, friendly, playful, snuggly. We understand that even great foster animals get shy or worried at adoption events, but you need to be able to show potential adopters or adoption event coordinators that your foster is friendly via good photos, videos, or stories. If you live alone, try to invite other people and children over to interact with the animals to increase their social skills with new people and situations.
MarketingWe want fosters to be aware that there is an aspect of “marketing” involved in getting our animals adopted out. As the foster, you typically get to name your fosters animals. Please give them cute, fun, sweet, or normal names. Groups of kittens or puppies often do well with theme names – i.e. characters from books or movies. Do not name your fosters negative, ugly, or rude names because it does not typically translate well for potential adopters (I.e., “little turd” or “monster” or “poop machine”). Another aspect of marketing is great photos. It takes patience to get great photos of animals but do your best. Be aware of the backgrounds in your photos. No one wants to see trash, clutter, or litterboxes in the background. Use good lighting and make sure the images are in focus and not randomly cutting off ears or tails with unthoughtful framing. If you want a video used on Petfinder make it 15 seconds or less. The cuter the photos, the faster they are adopted! You also need to help the adoption coordinators out by providing detailed and specific bios for any foster animals ready for adoption. These need to be thoughtful, engaging, emotional, and/or fun. Back stories are useful. Personality descriptions are needed. Bios that only say “sweet, playful and snuggly” do nothing to help potential adopters differentiate what animal is the best fit for their family. Providing good "marketing materials" of the animal is part of your role as a foster home.
SanitizingAfter each group of fosters have been adopted and before you start another group or individual foster, you need to sanitize all the areas in your home they lived in and all items they used. This means you wash bedding (preferably with bleach), clean toys, wash dishes, scrub down carriers, spray pet sanitizer on soft furniture, mop floors, bleach-clean litter boxes. Even if you didn’t experience an illness, we still require this sanitizing process. This reduces cross-contamination, keeps your home clean, and makes it safer and more comfortable for your next foster. If you did deal with a highly contagious infection in your cats or dogs like ringworm, distemper/parvo, colds, etc. we ask that you take your sanitizing to the next level – clean twice using professional sanitizers or bleach, clean hard floors, walls, and doors, get professional carpet cleaning done, etc. If you deal with something like distemper/parvo you will only be able to foster fully vaccinated animals for up to 2 years afterward unless you can demonstrate that you have and are able to keep a “clean room” for new unvaccinated fosters.
NeglectIf your foster is lost, runs away, has an accident that requires medical attention, or passes away on your watch the organization will need to do a query to decide if it was because of neglect. In cases of neglect, you will be held financially responsible for adoption fees. If there is abuse or cruelty happening to the foster animal on your watch, you will be held liable for that. We understand that true accidents happen and good fosters who experience a loss or an accident with a foster animal will be supported in the difficult experience, but anyone who intentionally neglects or harms our animals will be charged fees, released as a foster from our group, put on a do not adopt to list, and potentially reported to the local authorities.
If you are ready to join us as a foster, please fill out this first step, our Foster Questionnaire. Having problems viewing, click here.