Maddie’s Insights: Exploring Efficacy, Barriers, and Best Practices of Companion Animal Foster Caregiving
Foster care is a unique form of human-animal interaction that is increasingly understood to be an effective tool for improving the welfare of shelter-living animals. Even brief stays in foster care can allow animals to escape the stressors of the shelter, provide an environment that allows for greater social interaction, and offer opportunities for improved health and behavior.
In this presentation, we will highlight the key takeaways revealed in the 42 published articles evaluating companion animal foster care programs that are included in our recent review paper: Companion animal foster caregiving: A scoping review exploring animal and caregiver welfare, barriers to caregiver recruitment and retention, and best practices for foster care programs in animal shelters. During our discussion, we will examine a variety of foster care programs that have been studied, explore the evidence of their effects on human and animal welfare, evaluate the successes and challenges in supporting shelter foster care programs, illuminate discrepancies in equity and diversity of caregiver engagement that offer opportunities for recruitment, and recommend best practices for lasting programmatic success.
Learning Objectives:
1. Describe scientific research about foster caregiving as an intervention for companion animals.
2. Identify the proximate (i.e., physical and emotional) and distal (i.e., length of stay and adoption outcomes) welfare benefits of foster caregiving for shelter animals as well as their caregivers.
3. Explore opportunities for improving foster care programs in animal shelters, including utilizing a stepwise approach to foster caregiving, providing greater caregiver support, increasing the diversity of caregiver involvement, and expanding the extent of community engagement within foster care programs.
Guest Speakers:
Lisa Gunter
Assistant Professor, PhD, CAAB, CBCC-KA
Dr. Lisa Gunter is an Assistant Professor of Animal Behavior & Welfare at Virginia Tech in the School of Animal Sciences and directs the Center for Applied Animal Research & Education (CAARE). Before beginning her graduate studies, she worked for nearly a decade with dogs in animal shelters and owners and their dogs. Over her academic career, she has investigated the breed labeling of shelter dogs, their breed heritage, shelter housing and social interactions with other dogs and people, weeklong fostering, temporary stays in foster homes, short-term outings, behavioral indicators of welfare, post-adoption interventions focused on owner retention, canine adoption and relinquishment in the animal shelter - and more recently, fostering during the pandemic and safety net programs aimed at keeping people and their pets together. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Coastal Carolina University and the Maddie’s Fund Research Fellow at Arizona State University and managed the ASU/VT Maddie’s Nationwide Fostering Study. Lisa earned her PhD and MA degrees in the behavioral neuroscience and comparative psychology program at Arizona State University in the Canine Science Collaboratory.
Grace Phillips, Master's Student
Virgina Tech, School of Animal Sciences
Grace Phillips is a M.S. student in the Animal Behavior & Welfare Group at Virginia Tech in the School of Animal Sciences. Grace earned her B.S. in biology and psychology from the College of William & Mary. After graduation, she worked on human-animal interaction research studies in the Center for Human-Animal Interaction (CHAI) at Virginia Commonwealth University Health. She also provided foster homes to shelter animals at Heritage Humane Society. While Grace’s undergraduate degree and time at CHAI sparked her love of research, education, and inquiry, her experiences with animal sheltering and therapy dogs enhanced her interest in animal welfare and furthering her understanding of animal behavior. As a graduate student mentored by Dr. Lisa Gunter, Grace is able to combine her research interests and passion for animal advocacy in their Center for Applied Animal Research & Education (CAARE) through research focused on companion animal welfare and behavior. Currently, Grace is studying the efficacy of hybrid foster programs in which dogs reside in PetSmart Everyday Adoption Centers during the day and caregiver homes at night, changes in activity levels of dogs in the animal shelter and once placed in a home, and enrichment interventions that improve the welfare of shelter-living animals.
Audience:
Animal sheltering staff, volunteers, and foster caregivers who are interested in learning more about the science behind companion animal foster caregiving and how fostering can effectively be used as a human-animal interaction intervention in animal shelters and welfare organizations.
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