Giving thanks for rescuers and fosters

Mahatma Ghandi said, “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” I really believe that’s true. It’s absolutely true on a local level, too.

The overpopulation of domestic animals in our area is significant. Local municipal animal controls typically stay filled to capacity and regularly have to make hard decisions.

They’re doing everything they can to help but have very little space. They routinely take in more animals than they adopt and unfortunately cannot hold all those animals until homes are found.

In an ideal world where the homeless animal population was manageable, shelters would be doing community outreach rather than warehousing animals and picking up more strays. As it stands now, because of the stress from the sheer numbers of homeless pets most municipal shelters struggle to have a positive impact in their communities.

Overpopulation seems like a problem that never goes away, and until all dogs and cats are spayed it won’t go away. There are just too many more babies born than there are homes for them.

But there are people who make an impact and do what they can to save as many homeless pets from having their lives cut short because there is no space for them in the shelters. These are compassionate people who want to make a difference.

They are rescuers. They’re volunteers, some of who disregard their own comfort and safety, who go into areas of all sorts to save animals at risk. It may be a dog abandoned in a high crime area or a litter of orphaned kittens in a narrow crawl space under a disintegrating blighted house.

Some may be part of an organized animal rescue group. These folks work with municipal animal controls to methodically save dogs and cats from high-kill shelters and, following prescriptive protocol, either transfer them to no-kill shelters or find homes for them.

It seems there is frequently a lag time between when pets can be removed from the shelter and the accepting party can take them. It’s always a carefully choreographed dance. That’s where fosters come in.

Fosters are volunteers who have been previously approved to temporarily care for pets typically from municipal shelters until the receiving party is prepared to accept them. Fosters impact the volume of pets saved from high-kill shelters because the availability of fosters determine the number of pets rescuers can retrieve from the high-kill environment.

Both rescuers and fosters are heroes to the animals they save. We need more of them. If you’d like to be a foster contact any rescue group listed below my article. They’ll be delighted to hear from you.

To all the rescuers and fosters out there, please know how grateful I am for you.

This story was originally published June 9, 2017 at 1:57 PM with the headline "Giving thanks for rescuers and fosters."