“Fostering a dog is not a lifetime commitment, it is a commitment to saving a life.”

A foster home provides an animal with a safe, temporary place of refuge that provides time and space to recover and heal from any trauma it may have endured, as well as time to learn to trust and love again as they wait for a permanent, adoptive home.

Michiana 4 Paws, like most rescues, rely solely on a network of dedicated, volunteer foster homes, and could not survive without them. Rescues NEVER have enough foster homes. Why? Because there are more dogs in need than there are foster homes available to meet that need. If a foster home isn't available, these animals are forced to try to heal in the kennels of shelters or pounds that are often overcrowded.

By opening their homes, a foster family drastically increases an animal's chance of being adopted. With a stable environment, one-on-one attention, exercise, training, love and affection, foster families have the opportunity to encourage and help restore that animal to its happy, healthy self and be ready to, once again, be a pet that any person or family would be proud to call their own.

Fosters are the essential eyes and ears of a rescue. By spending every day with an animal, fosters will learn all they can about the particular personality. Knowing the good, the bad, and the ugly about an animal in a safe, loving environment, enables us to find the “right” forever home based on true facts.
 

To foster an animal is, quite simply, to save that animal's life.