In the spring of 2008 we started to become foster parents for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats for Always Hope Animal Rescue. Being a foster parent means to take in puppies/dogs/kittens/cats into your home until they are placed, or ready to be placed into an adoptable home.

We started out with three puppies that were 5 weeks old. They were SO cute and full of energy! We gave them all of the required shots and medications for their age, and continued to do so until they were adopted out to loving families!

This was so rewarding to us, that we decided to try to ALWAYS have foster pet(s) in our home to nurture, love, socialize with our own pets, family & friends, train, spoil, etc....besides they are all too darn cute!

Lately we've been taking in mostly kittens because our 3 older cats seem to almost act like parents to them and they all get along really well. They also teach the kittens some manners in a way!
We also often have a dog or two staying with us, so the kittens really get a well rounded experience with K-9 pets as well. All of these experiences that we give our foster pets can only help them to become great pets for the people who adopt them when they come to an adoptable age.

Here are a few of our first kitten fosters, they've all been adopted now:    

Blacky

Beans

They are brother and sister

Junebug

Sure we get attached to them, but the beauty of fostering is: There's always more new kittens and puppies needing love and care until they are old enough to be adopted! (Often too many because pet owners fail to get their pets spayed or neutered as they should!)
It is still a lot of fun and very rewarding to see how they grow and learn in the few short weeks that we care for them. It is also considerable work and probably not for everyone, but we are already fully trained in pet care, pet first aid and have years of experience with many different kinds of pets and animals, plus we have steady schedules and do not have kids, so it works out quite well for us. Our kids are our pets and foster pets, so we devote a majority of our time to them as any parent would.

If anyone is interested in seeing the pets we are fostering or might like to adopt one you can see what we've had in the past and what we currently have almost ready for adoption you can view our fostering gallery. If you have any questions about how we foster pets or if you might like to be a foster parent yourself you can contact Dana and she will be more than happy to help out.