Fostering a dog

I think my wife did this via the Cinamon trust. I think she just took the dog out for some one who was house bound. We then got a dog. Wife became a dog walker and sitter. Now we are back to one rescue dog and a bit of volunteer walking.

It seems a risk free way of dipping a toe in the water. 

I think you just need to be able to say no if the fig doesn’t work for you. Most dogs are fine. Some are terrible

It's a great way to try out dog ownership. All bills are covered and if you can't handle it there is support available or someone to take over.

We foster for a charity. Had a few dogs now. We usually get the problem ones. They can be a handful but great to have around. Just been for a walk with three of them (although one is ours for keeps now). Just be aware they may have issues and at the very least might be a bit discombobulated for a few days with the change of scene. Charity rules say we are not allowed to leave them alone for more than four hours, but I'd say less than that for at least a few weeks.

My friends have done this and both times ended up with "problem" dogs. First one went back pretty promptly but they kept the second one. 

We fostered dogs for about 3 years.  Don't be precious about your carpets and get used to saying goodbye.  Don't be fooled by the first few weeks as they are often in shut down mode and their true character only emerges later on.  Great thing to do if you can.  If you are South East I can send you some contacts.

Don’t be fooled by the first few weeks as they are often in shut down mode and their true character only emerges later on

Very much this. I have fostered (no issues at all - it wasn't a problem dog) and have rehomed the current two.

It's not a hard and fast thing, but the 3:3:3 rule is a good yardstick. 3 days to get over the travel, 3 weeks to learn your routine and 3 months to truly feel at home. Worth considering if the foster will be short term. 

Thanks everyone for the advice.  Most of it was along the lines of what I would have expected.   I'm sure it will be challenging sometimes but very rewarding as well.

  If you are South East I can send you some contacts

That would be great.  We live in North Hampshire.

We adopted earlier this year, thought about fostering as well, but ended up adopting as it requires less ability from us to do, was amazed at the speed of adoption, went down, saw her, she was back with us in 4 days, short term turn around and the fosterer barely had her a week, not a huge amount of time to bond with a dog or really understand, as she was pretty shut down and didn't come out of her shell for about a fortnight with us.

As always, a dog is a huge commitment, but you sound similar to us, i.e. house coverage all week with WFH and so on, holidays become dog friendly holidays, biking can become walkies as well, it all fits in well, just work out what size of dog you're after and get in there with a few of the adoption charities and so on, still costs a few hundred in donations and so on.

There are hundreds if not thousands of dogs in rescue right now - many due to owners now longer being able to afford to keep them. We fostered Barney - his owner died suddenly and as basset owners, we were asked to take him on as we lived nearby - we took him on via BRNGB - there are lots of breed-specific rescue and foster groups. His previous owner had dementia and his wife bed-bound - he got zero exercise and was overweight (35kg) from being fed scraps. He was blind in one eye due to glaucoma, limited vision in the other,  his nails were over-grown and he had a broken tooth making eating painful and slow. Daily walks with our other 2 helped bring his weight down - we took him to the vet to get his tooth removed. After a few weeks, his strength and mobility improved as he lost weight and his true character emerged, as a gentle, affectionate dog. We would have loved to keep him, but with 2 younger dogs it was pretty difficult so we put him up for adoption after 3 months. Not all dogs up for foster or adoption have behaviour problems - responsible organisations will screen dogs and owners to try and match them.

Don't think I've ever seen a Fred Bassett in the flesh but pics of them do make me smile!

@JonnyC  - try your local places first.  Our place is currently only looking for permanent homes but I do know that Holbrook Animal Rescue in Horsham is currently looking for people to foster (perhaps a bit far). Good luck!

We have fostered a few over the years, from puppies to dogs.  We only ever had one problem dog and the charity took him back the next day. The bigger problem was giving them back.  We have two large dogs (they got jealous) and one cat, meant we never really able to keep any of them 🙁

I regularly meet up with one of the dogs we fostered on our walks as she was adopted very locally. She still remembers me.  What's worse is my two dogs still remember her and still give her a hard time despite her still trying to win their approval.

What’s worse is my two dogs still remember her and still give her a hard time despite her still trying to win their approval.

We foster cats which is great fun. I know cats aren't dogs, but they suit us better. We've had over 50 through our doors in total over the past decade, and around 20 kittens in the past year alone since it became more organised and official. This (for us) is short-term fostering with a view to rehoming elsewhere, rather than long-term for problematic cats.

We adopted about 6 years ago. Since then, we've fostered a couple as our Bella seems to have a fantastic calming effect on reactive dogs.

Being able to see dogs in a home environment helps them get adopted.

We only had Maverick a couple of weeks but watching him be driven away by his new owner was hard.

Luckily, the dogs have met up a couple of times and still get on fantastically.

We fostered Jess as a RSPCA court case dog. They try and find foster homes for dogs that were not doing too well in the shelter.  She is remarkably unscathed by being starved to within an inch of her life. To be honest, the hardest thing was not being allowed to put pictures of her on social media. With the legal case dogs you have to have a secure exercise area and they need be on lead once they are off your property at all times as well. <br />Once her case was sorted we were given first refusal. We could not pass that up. Little croissant that she is.