Why foster?

A greyhound or lurcher is for life not just for racing and working - some are ill treated and they all deserve a second chance.

Fostering is a bridge between the dog's working, racing and kenneling lifestyle with retirement and home living. It provides stability for their first real contact with the world outside racing. It can often help re home dogs easier as it removes or reduces some of the stresses and problems involved with settling the dog into its new home because by the time they are re homed they are often house trained and getting used to living in a 'home' environment.

Greyhounds and lurchers coming into rescue have usually been living in kennels, sheds or garages. When they arrive they often have to stay in a 'kennel' environment until they are found new homes, which can take anything from a few days to a few months - even years. Therefore, the longer they are in rescue the harder they can be to re home so fostering is the 'bridge' that helps this process.

When a dog in Rescue, living in kennels finds a new home they are kennel trained but not necessarily house trained. The vast majority will have never been inside a house so televisions, washing machines, lawn mowers, bathrooms, stairs, glass doors and food being prepared in kitchens are all quite new to them - fostering helps them understand these new things and helps with the adjustment to home living thus reducing the risk of the new owner not being able to cope and putting them back into Rescue.

Why we wanted to foster
Because of our four lovely dogs - George was our first rescued dog and never having had one before we found it quite difficult getting to know him and learning to appreciate that he was often terrified of everyday things that we just took for granted. Each rescued dog is an individual, has sometimes had its character stifled and is somewhat of an 'unknown quantity' so in the early days we often don't know what their true characters are because of the way they were kept by their original owners.