If you ever considered fostering an animal, now will be the time.
The Estevan Humane Society has announced their Foster Home for the Holidays campaign. They are hoping to find foster families for their animals for the upcoming Christmas season.
Since the pandemic and related restrictions will keep many people at home this year, fostering an animal may become an option, that may also add some happiness and joy.
Humane society manager Michaela Pho said that they are looking for temporary foster homes for their 57 cats and possibly two dogs to empty out the shelter over the holidays. The shelter will be closed Dec. 21-28, so the hope is people will pick up animals the weekend before it and will keep them until the weekend after New Year’s Day, for about two weeks in total.
"It's always nice for the animals to be in a home environment," Pho said. "It's nice to have as many as we can in a home, where they are going to get a little bit more attention and have somewhere to spend a holiday. Most people will be home anyway, so we figured this would be a great idea."
The humane society will have reduced hours over the holidays, so if there are any animals left in the shelter, they are not going to get as much attention as they currently receive.
The shelter will provide food, water and food dishes, blankets, litter and litter boxes if needed to all foster families. If the animal require medical care, they will also pick up the bill.
"It's just a home that is really needed and someone to take care of them."
To foster an animal people would need to fill out an application providing information about their environment as well as some references.
"We do require references just because the animals won't be in the shelter, so we won't be able to keep an eye on them ourselves. So we just need to know what the families are like that are taking animals home, what their past history is with animals, if they do have animals currently, any allergies, stuff like that. Just so that we could find them a good fit when they do decide to come in and pick one out," Pho said.
The shelter has a big variety of animals, so while going through foster applications they always try to find the best match for each particular household.
Usually, applications are reviewed within one business day but may take a bit longer depending on the workload. The application forms can be found on their website and at the shelter.
Pho added that if people will want to keep animals after fostering them, they offer a foster with intent trial adoption option.
"If they take these animals home and they decide, 'Oh, I can't,' they can take them back to the shelter. But they do get this full two-week trial period and then they just let us know if they want to keep that animal, and then we just finalize the adoption," Pho said.
There are no fees or expenses associated with fostering. And if people decide to keep the animal after, they would need to pay the regular adoption fee.
