Animal shelters are often overcrowded, and shelter staff may lack the time to really spend with individual animals. If that animal is suffering from an illness or has had a distressing past, it can take time for them to recover and to be ready for adoption. Fostering can play a vital role in this recovery period – helping individual animals that need a bit of extra love and care and getting them ready for their forever home. 

Animal fostering provides temporary care to shelter animals who need to live in a home environment prior to adoption. A foster parent or family may share their home with their foster animal for a long or short time, depending on the animal's needs and how long it takes for them to be adopted. Anyone who is thinking of fostering must keep this in mind. The longer you spend with an animal, the harder the parting will be. If a foster family and their animal really hit it off, the foster home may become a permanent home with the foster family deciding to adopt their foster. 

The hardest part of fostering may very well be when you let your foster animal go onto their new adoptive home. This can be hard especially if you have become very attached to them.  But you should be proud and happy that you could accompany “your” foster animal on its road to its forever home and open your heart for the next one. If after a time with your foster animal you cannot imagine a life without them, then there may be the option to adopt them and provide the forever home they need.