13: "Should" Everyone Foster? Rescue Pressure, Big Emotions, and Multi-Dog Integration Thoughts
Description
Sean and Haley sit down to talk about fostering, which is clearly very top of mind lately. I am absolutely honored to have inspired some people with dogs like Scout (fearful, reactive, otherwise not social butterflies, etc) to open their homes to foster pets. I'd love to normalize the fact that creatures can coexist without directly interacting — it doesn't have to be "throw the dogs in the backyard and they immediately get along" all or nothing!
That said, it's also really important to me that our personal experiences fostering are never used to say "hey this is possible, therefore you have to". Sometimes there can be a lot of pressure in the rescue world — and while I empathize with where those big emotions come from, everyone gets to make the decisions right for their individual pets and situations. We all decide what level of management and risk we're comfortable with. There is no one single way to be a "good" person or animal lover.
In short: The ultimate goal of these rambles is to acknowledge that fostering a dog who is not interacting with resident animals (for whatever reason):
- Can be very hard. A multi-dog household, even if temporary, is never something I'd expect or force.
- But: It also is doable in the right circumstances. Not every animal in a house has to be instant best friends for it to be a successful experience!
Nuance, as always.
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