As is well publicized in the animal world, foster care parents are always in high demand. On Valentine’s Day, the sweet story about Dinky, the six-year old Terrier mix rescued by Helen Woodward Animal Center (HWAC) in Rancho Santa Fe, California, positively represented the way that becoming a foster parent can benefit both a family and the animal needing a temporary home.
The story that was revealed showed that the power of love can give an animal a good life – even if that life is expected to be short-lived like Dinky’s is expected to be. Foster parents can lend love that can have the capacity to change an animal’s life forever through something as simple as stability.
Although Helen Woodward Animal Center is a place of compassion, they realize that a foster care setting provides what an animal needs most as well as allowing the Center to have room to take in even more animals that need rescuing. HWAC’s policy is to help as many animals as possible.
As is with Dinky’s case (although Dinky’s story is not as positive), the foster time period will be short lived. Two to four weeks is a typical foster parent time range. Dinky’s foster parents are actually hoping for a bit more time since that would mean that Dinky was still living (albeit with terminal cancer) and Dinky was helping the father of the family recover from his cancer bout.
Not only are high-risk animals like Dinky candidates for foster homes, but typical puppies and kittens, pregnant animal mothers, mother animals with their litters and adult dogs and cats in need of socialization are also animals in need of foster homes.
Helen Woodward Animal Center, as well as other reputable animal rescues around the United States, will all supply you with everything that you deem necessary to comfortably keep the animal in your care. Necessities like food, bowls, crates, collars, leashes and sometimes even treat and toys are all supplied by the recues. Additionally, veterinary care, medicines and grooming care is furnished to the animal by the rescues. The only real assets that you will need to provide are time and love.
The payback is not calculable. If you put time in, the results are extraordinary. The love that is supplied by both animal and human cannot be compared!
If you have interest in Helen Woodward’s foster care program, contact Denise Clark at : 858-756-4117 extension #375, visit www.animalcenter.org or stop by at 6461 El Apajo Road in Rancho Santa Fe. There is no greater reward than to give an innocent animal a chance at a good life with a forever family!
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