Recommendation of Animal Rescue in Northern VA to FOSTER a dog

[Anonymous]

Our family would like to become a foster family for dogs. Our intention is to gain more knowledge about dogs. And to eventually Foster to adopt. Kids are teenagers and one elementary aged. The kids are good with friends and family dogs and we were owners of cats perviously. We have been researching some rescue agencies but are having trouble deciding. Please recommend a rescue agency that you have had a positive foster experience with located in Northern VA.

[Anonymous]

Homeward Trails!

[Anonymous]

Wolf trap!

[Anonymous]

Wolftrap Animal Rescue

[Anonymous]

Lab Rescue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Homeward Trails!

+1

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have a positive fostering experience to share with Homeward Trails or others mentioned? We researched rescues and have found a few reviews online but each agency seems to be a little different in terns of their foster programs

[Anonymous]

Animal Welfare League of Arlington or Lab Rescue for newbies, City Dogs or Mutt Love for people with dog experience. Wouldn't recommend Lost Dog or Homeward Trails as I've heard of lots of health and behavior issues, respectively.

[Anonymous]

BREW, the local beagle rescue is great for fostering. I had my fosters for about 3 weeks on average during the pandemic, but I think in normal times, you could have them a little longer. I've also fostered for Lucky Dog, and they are so high volume that the dogs get adopted so quickly. I often only had my fosters for a weekend.

[Anonymous]

https://www.lostdogrescue.org/

We had a good experience with them fostering a little puppy from Texas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.lostdogrescue.org/

We had a good experience with them fostering a little puppy from Texas.

Me again. When you foster a dog off transport, you have to be ready for anything, because available info will be very limited. I don't think the premise of your post, and that of some replies, gets to what fostering is really all about. If you want a known quantity, then you can foster a dog who is already in a long-term foster situation: however those dogs tend be seniors or have medical or behavioral issues, which are already KNOWN. So people generally tend not to want to foster them, or they do but then the dogs have a harder time getting adopted. The puppies shipped from southern/midwestern states and needing urgent fostering are pretty much a lottery, but the advantage is that they're generally cute, trainable and rapidly adoptable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.lostdogrescue.org/

We had a good experience with them fostering a little puppy from Texas.

Me again. When you foster a dog off transport, you have to be ready for anything, because available info will be very limited. I don't think the premise of your post, and that of some replies, gets to what fostering is really all about. If you want a known quantity, then you can foster a dog who is already in a long-term foster situation: however those dogs tend be seniors or have medical or behavioral issues, which are already KNOWN. So people generally tend not to want to foster them, or they do but then the dogs have a harder time getting adopted. The puppies shipped from southern/midwestern states and needing urgent fostering are pretty much a lottery, but the advantage is that they're generally cute, trainable and rapidly adoptable.

DP building on this - I don't quite get why you want to foster up front vs. just adopting a puppy. In a foster situation you're either going to get an easy to adopt out puppy or young dog or an older dog with issues. It's not the same as dogsitting your friends' trained adult dog. I think dogsitting might be what you actually want to do.

[Anonymous]

Maybe you didn't know this, but you are largely responsible for getting your foster dog adopted at some point. The younger the dog is, the easier it is, particularly if they're social and reasonably well-behaved. You need to train the dog to be as adoptable as possible! If you foster a senior dog or one with issues, then it might be very difficult to get them adopted, and they might do the foster rounds for a while. You might face some pressure to keep fostering even if you say you're cannot.

For all these reasons, I'm not entirely certain that fostering is a great idea for humans who have no experience with dogs.

[Anonymous]

Wolf Trap has a little different program, and it works well for us. The foster period is always three weeks. It’s almost always young puppies (under 12 weeks). You know in advance the day you will get the puppy and the day you will transfer it to the new owner. Occasionally the puppies aren’t adopted and you can agree to foster for the next period, or you can say no. There is good support and a vet on their staff (the founder).

Other rescues we’ve used are less organized and more uncertain - you may have the dog two days or two months. I also at this stage in life prefer young puppies because I have a toddler and I don’t want older dogs with unknown histories up at face level. Puppies though also mean more accidents. We keep them in a crate at night or have a large playpen area with hard floor.

Good luck! It can be very rewarding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wolf Trap has a little different program, and it works well for us. The foster period is always three weeks. It’s almost always young puppies (under 12 weeks). You know in advance the day you will get the puppy and the day you will transfer it to the new owner. Occasionally the puppies aren’t adopted and you can agree to foster for the next period, or you can say no. There is good support and a vet on their staff (the founder).

Other rescues we’ve used are less organized and more uncertain - you may have the dog two days or two months. I also at this stage in life prefer young puppies because I have a toddler and I don’t want older dogs with unknown histories up at face level. Puppies though also mean more accidents. We keep them in a crate at night or have a large playpen area with hard floor.

Good luck! It can be very rewarding.

Thank you for this. Our kids want to be helpful to dogs in need and want to see if training/owning a dog is something they think they(we)can handle. We are up for a puppy/young dog. This set ~3weeks seems to be good for us to start and try a few times. We fully understand that training and possible behavior issues is involved in fostering as we’ve been researching quite a bit what it entails.