In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of foster dogs available in shelters and rescues that are waiting for their forever home. In the Athens community, there are several foster care programs for dogs. One organization is the Athens Canine Rescue, which dedicates its time to finding supportive fosters for its dogs and strives to find them a suitable environment that may lead them to their forever homes.
Athens Canine Rescue is a nonprofit organization that provides a volunteer network of foster homes in Athens, and began in the 1980s. ACR does not have a shelter in Athens, but rather relies on fosters to shelter and house its dogs. The nonprofit’s goal is to try to have no out-of-pocket costs for its fosters, which is why it provides fosters with food, a crate, leashes, harnesses and toys for the dogs.
Glara Evansun, the president of ACR, explained how most dogs they foster are from the Athens-Clarke County Animal Shelter, where they might have been surrendered, abandoned or found as strays. ACR will also sometimes get dogs through surrender emails or if someone is trying to give up a dog.
“We try to balance because we want to save as many dogs as possible… we rely on having dedicated foster homes, and hopefully [those who] are in it for a while,” Evansun said.
ACR requires its fosters to go through a process to ensure both that they can provide good living conditions for the dog and that the foster is comfortable, which is what they call their trial week. The trial week allows the prospective foster to house the dog for a week and see how the dog and foster work together in the environment to see if they are a good match together.
“They’ll get a trial week,” Evansun said. “We’ll have foster homes that are like, ‘I really want to do this, but I didn’t know how much work it was going to be,’ or, ‘I thought they would get along with my dog, or my dog would be more easy going with other dogs but I guess they’re not.’”
If a foster is taking care of a dog and decides that they want to adopt the dog, ACR has an adoption coordinator that works on communicating with the foster about moving forward with the adoption.
“When we have potential adopters, we screen the adoption paperwork. We have references that we ask for and things that, once it’s approved, we set up a time for the new foster home…to meet up with the dog,” Evansun said.
When ACR is introducing a dog to a potential foster or adopter, they have whoever is fostering the dog and whoever will be living in the home meet the dog so they can make sure it is a good fit. ACR typically likes to facilitate this meeting at “neutral ground,” such as Sandy Creek Park.
“If [the meeting] goes well, we wait to do what we call an adoption trial process. We check in with the potential adopter the next day. We try not to do same-day adoptions because we want to avoid impulse adoptions, because it’s a lifestyle commitment,” Evansun said.
The ACR website provides a survey for prospective volunteers to fill out in order to understand what type of dog the volunteer should be matched with based on the volunteer’s preferences and needs. Once a foster goes through this process, ACR’s goal is to make sure that the foster and dog are the right fit for one another.
Despite the uncertainty that comes with fostering for some people, Evansun said many fosters that volunteer for ACR are committed to finding these dogs a forever home.
“I think the love for dogs is what gets people into it,” Evansun said. “Hopefully, what also made people continue to be in our organization [is] for a sense of community and friendship.”
The foster coordinator for ACR, Brandon Grisham, has worked with Evansun since 2020 to support dogs in finding their forever homes, while also having his own experiences with being a foster for ACR.
“I had been a foster for a year, year and a half… [Evansun] asked if I wanted to take over that kind of role,” Grisham said.
Grisham became a foster in August of 2020 when he lost three of his own dogs within six months of each other. The loss of his own pets encouraged him to begin fostering to have the company of a pet without having any serious committments.
“We wanted the presence of a dog, but we didn’t want the commitments. It felt sad coming home when you’re used to there being dogs in the house, and then everything’s so quiet,” Grisham said.
Throughout Grisham’s time as a foster, he and his girlfriend each adopted a dog, and he has now continued to support ACR through helping with administrative tasks, placing dogs in homes and helping with dog training.
With ensuring that the administrative side of the organization is going smoothly, Grisham also ensures that things go smoothly with potential fosters through discussing necessary information.
“When people apply to foster, I’m the person who does the Zoom call… where we go through the rules and regulations, they have to have the vet make sure their pets are up to date,” Grisham said.
Through Grisham’s personal experience with fostering, he highlighted how fostering can be great because someone can have a dog in their life without having a huge commitment, and they can help the community through getting dogs out of the animal shelter and into a more suitable environment.
“In the shelter, it’s loud, they don’t have all the comforts of home… So it’s a pretty high stress situation for animals in general, which is why they’re always trying to get dogs in foster homes versus being at the shelter,” Grisham said.
In animal shelters, dogs are often in a high stress environment because they are continuously surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, varying smells, and confined in a cage where they cannot see what is around them. If dogs are placed in a stressful environment, they may be more likely to develop bad habits and misbehave, which is why ACR continues to try to get more dogs out of the shelter.
Through fostering, donating, and spreading word on social media, the Athens community can support ACR’s mission to help dogs find their forever home. Those interested can find more information on the ACR website.
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