Providing a Foster Home - Please Call 949-3573 if You Can Help

Who and How Many
How Long
Reason Foster Care Needed

Mother cats with Kittens
Motherless cats
4 - 6 weeks
Kittens too young to adopt out

Mother dogs with puppies
3 - 4 weeks
Puppies too young to adopt out

Every year more than 200 shelter animals are given a second chance, thanks to the caring hearts of our volunteer foster homes. If not for them, these pets would not have survived. The shelter is not the right environment for a mother to raise her litter or for an injured/ill animal to recover. The stress and potential for the spread of disease is too great a threat to them in their fragile state. Fostering is truly a hands-on, life saving volunteer experience.

There is no financial commitment required, just your time and compassion. Any food, supplies or medical expenses required are covered by the Humane Society through donations and fundraising. The time commitment can range from a few weeks to a few months, depending on the individual situation. Typical foster care situations involve the care of a mother and her litter of pups or kittens. From time to time we need someone to take in orphaned puppies or kittens or injured/ill cats and dogs.

We ask that our foster homes have a separate room in which to house the foster animals, and, if you have pets of your own, that they have their shots up to date and are kept separated from the new arrivals. This is protection for both your beloved pet and the fostered pets - generally speaking, these are stray animals which we do not have a history on. Typically they have not received any type of veterinary care, which means they could be carrying diseases that we are not aware of.

Although we may call on our foster homes year round, spring is when we start to see the influx of litters and orphaned young. Having foster volunteer applications on file helps us to place these needy pets in homes as soon as possible. If you are interested in this very rewarding volunteer experience, please fill out the following FOSTER HOME APPLICATION FORM.

To Submit the Foster Home Application Form:

  1. Open or Save the form to your Desktop. The form is a Microsoft Word document.
    If you don't have Word, you can download the free Word Viewer which will enable you to open the document.
  2. Print out the document, fill in the hardcopy, and drop it off at the shelter at 962 Second Line East OR
  3. Print out the document, fill in the hardcopy, and fax it to 949-0169 OR
  4. Fill in the form on your computer desktop, save it, then "Insert" as a "File Attachment..." to ssmhs@shaw.ca.