Animal Welfare Professionals

Happy Monday! My organization is looking to expand our foster program to include animals not quite ready for adoption and make them available to the public for foster or "pre-adoption"; however, our Medical Director is hesitant due to issues that may arise. Does anyone have any experience we can share about placing pets with medical issues (heartworm positive, URI, etc.) into adoptive homes prior to their treatments being resolved? Specifically looking for adopter follow through, impact on length of stay, any issues, etc. Thank you community!

We began an adjunct program to our existing Foster Care program in 2017 - we call it our Medical Recovery Foster program. We send out pets with orthopedic surgeries, heartworm treatment, etc, with the understanding that the interested party becomes a foster parent for that pet until they are medically cleared for adoption. This way, will the pet is being treated, they also have the support of our Foster Care and veterinary teams. The foster parent abides by all Foster Care policies and has on-call support until the pet is officially adopted. Let me know if you have any questions - we have been really happy with this new program!

Thank you!! Yes, we already do this but it is for current foster parents. We do have heartworm dogs available, but only after the first injection. Do you put yours up for adoption prior to the first injection and, if so, have you had any complications with adopter follow through or pets not doing well post-injection? This is mainly what he is concerned about :)

We have these MRF pets available for the public to browse and then make them a foster parent. We often place these pets in foster homes before treatment - it helps us with the bottle neck we see with pets whose treatment takes weeks/months. We haven't had problems with follow-through- folks seem to understand the severity of the medical condition well with our support and educational materials. We also allow people to take a night to think it over before committing to be a MRF caregiver.

Awesome, thank you!!

Of course! I am attaching our SOP, in case it is helpful. : )

Attachment(s)

Medical Recovery Foster Care SOP - Animal Humane New Mexi...pdf   105 KB 1 version