By Emily B.



If you give a Girl Scout a foster dog, she will soon find she has fallen in love. By caring for an animal, not only has she learned responsibility, one of life’s greatest skills, but her heart will be touched when she finds out that her beloved companion got adopted. All fostering takes is your time to love and care for a precious pooch. But never forget the part about responsibility; remember it takes lots of that. That’s what I soon discovered with my temp foster Walter.

Last winter, my Junior troop was marketing a litter of puppies for adoption from Angels Among Us (AAU)* for our Bronze Award. AAU rescues dogs and cats and places them in foster care until they get adopted. For the Bronze, we made dog toys and blankets and “adopt me” bandanas for the dogs. We met them in person when we went to their adoption event. They were even on the news. They were so cute. We also spread the word about why pet rescue and fostering are so important.

When I asked to foster a dog myself, my family said that we were just too busy; sometimes it takes months for a dog to get adopted. I still felt the need to help a dog in some way though. AAU suggested I temp foster, helping a foster family over the holidays while they took a break to visit with relatives for a couple of weeks. My family agreed with the temporary foster project.

If your family is too busy to foster a dog fulltime till adoption, you can foster temporarily. The dog’s foster parents may go out of town or just sometimes need a break, so while they’re away you’ll be the one to take care of them. 

So, over the winter break, I took care of Walter, a ten year old Bassett Hound, while his foster family had lots of visitors in town for the holidays. The moment I laid eyes on him, I fell in love. Deep down inside though, I knew he wasn’t mine to keep. The first two days were hard because Walter wasn’t quite used to my family or the house. He had a couple of accidents, and I had to help clean them up since he was my responsibility. Then we started to bond, and the days went by so quickly. I was sad when he returned to his fulltime foster family, but I knew they had a job to do. 

A couple of weeks later, I learned a family in Florida adopted Walter! Now he has a forever home, and it felt great that I helped with that. I plan on temp fostering again this summer. Like I said before, if you give a Girl Scout a foster dog, she’ll just want to do it again…and again…and again…


*Learn more about fostering and adoption through Angels Among Us by visiting angelsrescue.org

No comments:

Post a Comment