Making Our Fosters Our Number One Priority

There was a question this morning in the comment section of one of our recent Facebook posts that we felt was important to answer in its own post. The person was asking why SNUGGLE Pet Rescue has a policy that if you are fostering for us, we do not want you fostering for another rescue group or even multiple ones at the same time. We suspect others might be wondering this too, so we want to explain our decision.

Since SNUGGLE Pet Rescue began in 2004, we've had the policy that if you foster for us, it will only be our kittens and puppies that you take care of. The main reason for choosing to do this is to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. When fosters come from different organizations and are being cared for in one home, you increase the risk that a contagious disease will be introduced to the entire group of kittens or puppies. If all or some of the fosters get sick and incur expensive vet bills, who will pay them? At first it may not be known who the initial carrier is, so until that is confirmed which organization covers the costs to hopefully save the lives of the fosters that are sick?

We are fully aware that with each new foster that we accept there is always the possibility of them having a not yet diagnosed disease. We faced this challenge recently. On July 3, we posted here on our Facebook page that we had experienced an increase in the number of our kittens that were dying. We shared this because we wanted to be transparent and to always share information that can be educational.

In order to verify the cause of death we had necropsies done on the kittens. We have also put a restriction on the two fosters who lost kitten receiving any new ones. We chose not to move the surviving kittens to another foster home because we did not want to risk spreading a disease even further. When the babies we are caring for are all our responsibility, we always make the decisions that are in their best interest. Once you have multiple organizations involved with dealing with an outbreak of a disease in one foster home it gets a lot more complicated. When people have different opinions and have the right to do what they chose for the kittens or puppies that are their responsibility it can create problems. Sometimes those decisions can also cause additional harm.

Of course, our team of Foster Care Volunteers want to see all orphaned, injured, sick and special needs kittens and puppies in a home where they are receiving the care they need to thrive. Especially, with the increase in the number of kittens in need of a foster home we recognize that too often there just are not enough places for them to go. That is why we are asking again for people to consider fostering, whether it is for us or another organization. If you would like to learn more about the SNUGGLE Pet Rescue Foster program and possibly apply to volunteer, you can click on the link below.

https://www.snugglepetrescue.org/foster

If we all just pitch in and do our part more lives will be saved!