Foster Drama

Fostering a dog for CAS is a pleasure for most people and for the foster dog of course.
This is true for people that already have a dog, see here.

Fostering seems so easy, but it does not always go as planned.
Ocassionally, the fosterers decide that they want to keep the dog,instead of CAS looking for a new home. This is very understandable because most foster dogs make wonderful friends

BUT it is important to understand that you cannot keep the dog AFTER it has been reserved by CAS for the new adoption family. From that moment on, the dog needs to go to its new home.

Last week we had such a drama.

A dog was on the CAS website for 4-5 weeks. During that time, the fosterer continued to say she did not want to keep the dog and even asked a few times if there was news about the adoption as the dog could not stay.

After the 5th week, the Dutch partner, HzH, found a new home in The Netherlands for the dog. However - when the fosterer was told, she suddenly decided that she did want to keep him!

That is great news for the dog, you might think! But we'll explain why this is really NOT a good idea !!
The new family with 2 young children had seen the dog on the website and by the time they decided to adopt it, it was "their dog". Now someone has to tell them that CAS & HzH cannot do what they promised. It goes without saying that the family was very upset, the children were crying and the volunteers from HzH were very discouraged about all the time they spend on it - in vain.
A further result is that the good names of HzH and CAS are endangered, because they are seen as unreliable. If you are dependent on word of mouth, the worst thing that can happen is to get a bad reputation.

So this has to be avoided. The foster family is asked to revise their opinion, and release the dog. In most cases the foster family understands the argument, but unfortunately, in this case the fosterer did not think about the consequences but chose for herself.

So what can CAS do about it? The "rules" for fostering are very clear. If you foster a dog, you are welcome to keep the dog. BUT when the dog is reserved for adoption, the point of no return has been reached and the dog needs to go.

Would a signed contract make a difference? I don't think it will. A contract only helps if you want to enforce it legally. Which means to spend time, money and energy in going to court.

Summarised: CAS is very, very happy if you foster a dog. You have to understand that you cannot keep it after it has been promised to someone else, however hard that sometimes might be.

In our communication with foster families, we try to make very clear that if we are successful in finding a new home for the animal, we consider that there is a binding agreement with you to release the dog from your care and allow us to complete the re-homing process. Accordingly, we will require a statement to appear in an email from you to the effect that you will release the dog when asked to do so.
If, at any time BEFORE a Reservation is made, you manage to home the stray, or if someone is coming to visit the dog with a view to homing it, you MUST tell us immediately.