Meanwhile, at the Hinsdale Humane Society, Anna Pec, 25, and Nicholas Duran, 27, both get ready to bring home their Christmas gift, an Australian cattle dog who was brought to the shelter with a litter of her siblings from an undisclosed high kill shelter. “I would definitely foster this little girl, but I already know what’s going to happen, she’s going to melt my heart and I’m going to have to keep her. So we decided to just adopt,” said Pec. Duran held the dog close and already the two were bonding. He wanted to bring her home immediately but she still needed to get spayed. “I’ve wanted a dog for the longest time, but hesitated because I knew I wasn’t financially stable. Now that I have my own place and steady income, I’m ready to enjoy a furry companion. I have turtles that I adopted, too, but they don’t cuddle,” said Duran.
It becomes hard to stop, many people have a hard time keeping just one pet, they feel it appropriate to have a companion, so the animals don’t get lonely. Business major and senior, Kenneth Razionale, 26, decided to adopt a cat after his childhood pet passed away. He now has two cats, a dog, a rabbit, and three turtles and explains, “My girlfriend wants to save the world one animal at a time, people are going to think we are pet horders, but they make her happy. She will bring home anything, if she saw a raccoon in need, it would be in the living room with the rest of the zoo. She says they’re being fostered, but everything has been adopted shortly after.”
Photo courtesy of Kenneth Razionale.
The most important thing is to be educated, not everyone has a happy ending. May people return their fosters when they suddenly realize how overwhelming a desocialized, destructive and frightened animal can be when it is introduced to a strange home and unable to cope. A foster parent takes on the role of a mentor and that can be stressful when a sickly pet needs to get rushed to a vet or taken away due to retrogression.
Shelter animals can’t tell us their past, they may have come from neglected, broken homes or a life on the streets, this isn’t a walk in the park for some. You can list a million reasons to say no, but if you just give them one small chance, foster pets will give you two million reasons to do it again.
PAWS Chicago is the largest No Kill humane organization in the Midwest. Not everyone can adopt or foster, they advocate spaying and neutering as the number one way of preventing pet overpopulation. Not one person interviewed said they regretted being a foster. “I got an early Christmas gift and she got a forever home,” said Duran when he signed his forms and left his deposit for Sydney. He will be back in a week to pick up his new member of the family.
Chicago Tribune writer, Mary Schmich, once wrote, “You may fall in love, but if it doesn’t work out, you haven’t lost much.“
