Animal Matters: Have you thought of fostering an animal?

The cost of basic care treatments for worming and deflea through to vaccinations and neutering is covered by the centre.

In most rescue centres I am sure they will feel just like us - sometimes it feels that we could do with a centre twice as big just to cope with the demand for spaces!

Building additional accommodation that is suitable for cats, dogs and rabbits costs a fortune. All pens and kennels need to be fully designed and built to meet the highest animal welfare standards and with this comes expense and time to put them together.

If people call to place their pet with us when we are full, and have long waiting lists, we sometimes suggest that we could put the details of the animal, along with photos, onto the Home from Home section on our Facebook site. The downside to this though is that we don’t have any control or responsibility over the rehoming process.

Far better is to have a network of foster families who could help out, either with new animals or with animals struggling to cope with centre life. We would come to do a quick home check, just to make sure that you have what we are looking for and to give you a rundown on how the process would work.

Basically, if it’s a new dog from our waiting list, for example, or a dog that was not coping at the centre, we would ensure that the pet was assessed to make sure it was not aggressive or suffering from severe behavioural or medical issues. Assuming that it was a nice friendly pet we would call you to see if you were in a position to look after it for a period until a space was available at the centre.

We would cover all costs, including food, cat litter, sawdust, hay etc as well as paying for any medical procedures whilst in your care. We believe that your help with fostering should be matched by ours in the form of covering all costs incurred. We would keep in touch for regular updates and would always be available should any problems arise.

This really is such an important option for us to have available.

We are desperately short of foster families, especially for dogs, so if you feel you could help in any way please do get in touch. Our contact details are listed on this page so give it a go and we can have a chat to go over the details.