So You Want to Foster Dogs…
Setting your space, your dogs and yourself up for success.
While Christian and I stopped fostering dogs in 2023, between 2019 and 2022 we fostered 50+ dogs for 2 organizations while renting in the SF Bay Area. To be completely honest, I originally started fostering because I wanted a second dog. But more or less by chance, I just never ended up foster failing any of the dogs we fostered all these years, and discovered fostering was an immensely valuable service I could provide for rescues and shelters and the dogs in our care.
With a lot of diligence (and cleaning skills), we managed to prevent damage and get our full deposit back after leaving every rental. Below I’ll detail steps we took to manage our household and tips and tricks that helped with cleaning and preventing damage, as well as successfully managing a multi-pet household!
Don’t lie to your landlord.
This is the biggest, most important, first step when your start down the road to fostering. I would wager a surprisingly high number of fosters do not get clearance from their landlord or building management prior to fostering, but the consequences (fees, even eviction) are pretty serious.
Make sure you understand your rental’s pet policy and what it entails. How many animals can you have in your rental? Are there breed restrictions? Did you pay a pet deposit or do you need to? How long can a pet stay in your rental before it needs to be covered by a pet deposit and approved by your landlord? Many landlords are picky about what dogs they approve, and for good reason.
I would also caution against registering fosters as Emotional Support Animals to skirt pet policies and restrictions, because it’s a bit sketchy (to say the least) to take advantage of that sort of program just to foster dogs, and ESAs are not immune to eviction if they are a nuisance or dangerous to other tenants.
2. Be honest about what you can handle and live with!
It’s stressful for both you and the dog to have to cut fostering short because they aren’t compatible with your household or lifestyle, so it’s incredibly helpful to be transparent about what you can handle from the get go! Below are a couple common things people use to build a foster dog criteria;
Size restrictions or preferences (this may depend on your rental’s pet policy)
Is the dog housebroken? If your rental has carpets or real wood flooring, potty training and accidents can become a major issue.
Is the dog crate trained? This can help with housebreaking and also containing the dog safely while you’re away.
Is the dog destructive indoors? Think chewing on baseboards, tables, carpet, etc… all things that can become major expenses in rentals.
How vocal is the dog? A dog that is very vocal, barks at noises outside or things outside the window, or even whines when left alone could all become noise complaints from neighbors.
How is the dog with new people outdoors and indoors? Consider your social life (visiting friends, going out to parks and cafes, or having family and friends over) and how a dog would ideally fit into it. A dog with stranger danger or fear of new people and places may bar you from going out with the dog to your regular spots or having people over.
Is the dog okay with other dogs? How was this assessed and what kinds of dogs has it had exposure to?
Is the dog child tested? If yes what ages and to what extent?
Common behavioral issues to ask about;
Separation Anxiety (and to what extent)
Dog Reactivity and Aggression
Human Reactivity and Aggression
Prey drive and behaviors toward small animals
Fearful behaviors (when and why)
Noise sensitivity (anything from people passing outside the home to fireworks)
Happy peeing
Resource guarding (toys, food, people, space, etc)
It’s also worth noting that, depending on where the dog is coming from, the shelter or rescue may not have answers to any of these common questions! A dog that is coming from a shelter or kennel environment may not have had any experience in a home, and therefore may not be housebroken, used to noises outside a home, had exposure to new people, places and dogs, etc. Be very transparent about what you are willing to live with and help train, and avoid taking in dogs with lots of “unknowns” unless you’re sure you can handle it!
On a related note, make sure the rescue or shelter you’re volunteering with is able to take back the dog or move it to another foster if needed.
3. Familiarize yourself with dog body language and behavior!
Unfortunately many rescues and shelters do not require volunteers and fosters to undergo training to learn about dog behavior and body language prior to jumping right into working or fostering. Even owners who have had dogs for decades apparently tend to not understand dog behavior, and that lack of understanding has a major correlation to dog “attacks”.
Regardless of how much experience you have with dogs, there is always room to learn! And it doesn’t hurt to take an hour to review educational videos.
I’d highly recommend Trish McMilan’s Dog Body Language for Shelter Workers course (it’s only $20 and you can finish it in about an hour).
These free videos are also great; and help with spotting stress signals and body language;
Part 1: https://youtu.be/8bg_gGguwzg
Part 2: https://youtu.be/t4N2XvnY7Mo
I’d ask if the rescue or shelter has a trainer or behaviorist on staff who can help when fosters need help or advice with their foster dogs.
4. Managing fosters indoors.
My first two fosters were small but at the time I was renting a room in a shared house with 4 other housemates. While the housemates were smitten with the puppies, I was keenly aware that these were my fosters, not their’s, and did not want the puppies to get in their way. At the time I didn’t even register how useful crate training was, and instead opted to keep the puppies in my room using a baby gate. We would go out to the yard and common areas for play time, and I was very careful about making sure puppies were contained when my housemates were entering/exiting the house (so we didn’t have any puppies running out the front door).
The baby gate system is something I continued indefinitely, even on top of a crate and rotate schedule with Mana and the fosters. It allowed me to easily separate dogs in the house and keep fosters away from our cats. One or two fosters were particularly clever and did figure out how to open the baby gate, but for the most part is was an excellent management tool in all of our rentals. If you’re fostering a particularly fearful dog or a flight risk, adding a baby gate in front of exits can be a life saver. I cannot tell you how many dogs slip out of homes and apartments when their handler is simply opening their door to grab mail or talk to a neighbor.
We learned the hard way that most baby gates can damage drywall/paint where they are tightened against the wall. I’d highly recommend getting the Wall Nanny buffers to protect your walls! They work like a charm.
Oona (foster) trying her luck with our old baby gate. She did not end up jumping it.
Aside from baby gates to keep dogs and cats separated, crates became something we heavily depended on as fosters. While not every dog we took in was totally crate trained, it was something we started training as soon as they entered our home.
Being able to crate dogs saved us from needing to supervise them 24/7, and allowed us to foster dogs that were not necessarily dog or cat friendly (because we could crate and rotate them with the other animals in the house to keep everyone safe). It was also an integral tool to housebreaking many, many, dogs and puppies.
The crate also provided a place for dogs to rest without being bothered, and became a safe space for dogs that did not like strangers entering the home or interacting with them. Many rescues and shelters can provide crates if you request it.
If for any reason you cannot use a crate to manage your foster but want to prevent damage (potty or vomit accidents) to your floors, look into whelping mats. Unlike flimsy traditional potty pads they’re harder for dogs to chew and move around, and they’re washable! We bought a few of these Drymate pads while fostering and used them on carpeted areas and for puppy pen set ups.
5. Introductions to resident dog(s).
As a household we tend to err on the side of extreme caution when it comes to dogs interacting in our home. While Mana is quite good with greetings and trained to recall away from another dog if needed, you can never guarantee how even two friendly dogs will react to one another. And with fosters, who typically had to travel quite a ways to get to us and were being plopped into a totally new environment with new people, we wanted to minimize any more trigger stacking for that dog.
Upon arrival Mana and the resident cats were always sequestered away from the new foster (either behind closed doors or the baby gate). We would allow the foster to arrive and potty outside, set up their crate, and take that potty and crate set up time to get a feel for how the dog was moving around us and the space. I would crate the foster (as best I can) and allow them to decompress and rest in the crate, and then would allow Mana into the room. The foster could see and smell him through the crate, and Mana could see and smell them as well (although I wouldn’t allow him to run right up to the crate door to snick his nose in their face).
The first time the dogs “met” was always on walk* (as neutral territory as we can get near our home). Christian would usually walk Mana ahead of us and I would walk the foster behind them. Halfway through the walk we would switch places with the foster ahead and Mana in the rear. Remember that dogs do not need to be right next to each other to smell each other!
Once Mana and the foster could do walks together calmly, even completely ignoring each other, I would allow them to do polite quick sniffs of each other (NOT face-on-face interactions, which are rude in dog body language) and move on to walking them side by side as long as they remained calm and manageable.
Mana and Oona (foster) calmly checking out some cows on a hike.
If your resident dog and/or the foster are not great on walks (pulls, are reactive or fearful or hard to manage in any way) I would personally not walk them together. You can gauge for yourself how much you can handle on walks, but often times one dog will set of the other in terms of reactivity or anxiety. Obviously if either dog is dog aggressive you can totally abstain from walking them together or allowing them to meet at all.
6. Introductions indoors and managing arousal in confined spaces.
If or when your resident dog and the foster are able to do walks together and stay calm, I start allowing the dogs to be in the same room together indoors.
The key things I do to set this up for success;
- Remove resources (food, chews, toys) from the space. I’d rather not figure out the hard way if one or both dogs have resource guarding behaviors.
- Use a drag leash (literally just keep a leash on and let it drag while the dog is indoors). This is useful in case we do need to intervene and lead them away from each other.
- Make sure the dogs have enough SPACE to avoid each other if they want to. I usually start these introductions in the largest room in the house (usually our living room). Many dogs are sensitive to spatial pressure and being cornered, even by accident (by a human or animal), can trigger a reaction. I would much rather Mana and the foster completely avoid each other than be in each other’s faces indoors.
- This one may be kind of crazy for some dog people, but I actually DO NOT allow the foster and Mana to play indoors. Even if they appear friendly to each other, play means excitement and over-arousal. Excitement and over-arousal in a confined space can be risky when it comes to trigger stacking and a dog feeling cornered and becoming defensive.
I’d also much rather Mana and the foster feel calm and relaxed indoors, rather than associating being indoors with playing (excitement). With our boarding clients, it’s very easy to tell which dogs are used to playing freely indoors and getting into an over-aroused state because they tend to have a hard time calming down unless they’re in a crate or on a place cot.
I do allow dogs to play outside (in our yard or at a park) as long as they can deescalate or stop playing in a healthy way and the play itself is healthy and balanced. You can refer back to the body language and behavior videos/courses for help with spotting healthy play and body language.
Remember: You never NEED to introduce two dogs, especially if you’re not comfortable doing so. There have been several cases where Mana never “met” a foster for various reasons. Crate and rotate and keeping dogs separate indoors and outdoors is absolutely fine and sometimes the safest way to manage a multi-dog household!
Mana and Bingsu, one of our more challenging fosters who we did end up doing a lot of training with prior to them being able to do walks together.
7. Understand your (and your foster’s) limits.
Looking back at our experiences fostering, now through the lens of a trainer versed in applied ethology, I will say that not many of our foster dogs were “normal” pet dogs in the way the general public might define “normal”. All dogs are a combination of their genetics and environment, and some dogs (at no fault of their own) are simply genetically pre-disposed to be less resilient to stress. Having started out fostering with relatively easy dogs, I feel like we kind of snowballed into taking in harder and harder dogs. But that does not need to be your experience as a foster!
It’s important to reflect on what you can handle and live with (revisit #2!) and accommodate when it comes to fostering a dog. But you also need to pause and consider what your foster dog can handle. Many of our foster dogs were not “bar dogs” that could calmly hang out with us in a pub or cafe, and it would be incredibly unfair of me to force them into a stressful situation like that. A handful of dogs couldn’t even handle walks in urban or busy areas. Some were incredibly stressed by new people in their space, so we avoided allowing visitors into our home while we had them. A few had extreme separation and confinement anxiety and one even tore our door frame off of the wall in an attempt to get out of home while we were gone!
Not everyone can accommodate a dog like that. As unfair as it is to ask a dog to tolerate a stressful situation, it’s equally unfair to ask a human to completely rearrange their lifestyle to accommodate a dog they do not own. Most fosters are not dog trainers or behaviorists. Fosters should not be expected to do train their foster dogs, although many end up doing basic house training with their fosters out of sheer necessity.
Never be afraid to communicate with the rescue or shelter about what you and your foster dog may be struggling with. A responsible rescue will be able to support you through it or help place your foster dog with another foster.
8. Decompression periods and patience.
All dogs, no matter how resilient or outgoing they are, go through an acclimation period when entering a new environment with a new family or person. Some dogs acclimate quickly, others take a few weeks or a month (or more) to truly decompress and get used to their new space.
The key to success is patience and routine. Your routine and daily schedule do not need to be exact, but having a roughly regular schedule for crate time, potty breaks, and walks will help make your dog’s new life predictable and easier to acclimate to. Even when foster dogs have graduated to free roaming (safely) in a room, I always have their crate accessible for them if they need to retreat to a safe place or rest.
In Facebook groups with rescue dogs (namely many Korean rescues), the most common advice I see for literally ANY behavioral problem or question is to “give it time”. While, yes, some “issues” may resolve as a dog settles into a new environment or matures, time does not fix everything and you do not need to be totally passive during the decompression period.
Management is something you can easily use to curb certain issues (destructive behaviors, housebreaking, issues with humans or dogs in the home, etc). If you have time, a great way to add value to your relationship is by handfeeding their meals. Some dogs won’t eat for the first day or two- and that’s totally fine. Offer kibble/food via handfeeding (you can toss it toward them at first if the hand itself is scary, or toss the food into their crate), and as they start to understand you’re a magical food dispenser they will become more comfortable taking food from you.
Some issues you may see during decompression are actual genetic predispositions and behavioral issues that need professional training to address. If your dog is struggling with specific things during decompression or certain issues are prevailing even after a few weeks or months, reach out to the shelter or rescue and ask if they have a trainer or behaviorist who can better guide you and the dog through the decompression period.
9. Cleaning supplies (because even the best management will fail).
Unfortunately we have dealt with everything from pee and poop to vomit and blood while fostering dogs. Below are some of our favorite cleaning supplies;
Nature's Miracle Advanced Platinum Stain & Odor Remover & Virus Disinfectant
We used this for stains, but it’s also a great disinfectant for crate cleaning! For carpets/rugs, spray on spot and leave on for a minute. Scrub in with a towel. Repeat if needed. Wipe away with a warm wet towel. You can use this on hard surfaces as well.Good ol’ Shout
Great for treating stains before sticking things in a washing machine. I used this a lot for stains on pet blankets and bedding.Bissell Professional Pet Urine Eliminator + Oxy Carpet Cleaning Formula
If you have an actual carpet cleaning machine (small or large), this is the best formula we have found for getting out pet smells and stains. Getting the smaller machine is a good investment if you have carpets or rugs in your home and plan on having animals in your home a lot.
What about the dog “smell”? I take great pride in the fact that none of our rentals have ever smelled like dog. Many people who live with dogs can become “nose blind” to the smell and have no idea their home smells like dog! But the why behind the dog smell is not always simple.
While keeping your dog clean is part of preventing the dog “smell”, diet also plays a huge part in skin and GI health and how much dogs smell. Often times that “dog smell” is actually yeast in their skin (When you smell a dog’s paw and it smells like Fritos? Yes that’s yeast.). Sometimes you don’t have control over that when you foster because the rescue may provide you with any food they have on hand, or you may not want to invest in feeding your foster dog expensive food.
If your foster has a slight “dog smell” even after being bathed, just make sure to regularly wash their bedding and keep them off rugs and furniture to keep them from spreading that smell everywhere.
If your foster has a major stink even after being bathed, or obvious skin irritation and dry/flaky skin, definitely escalate this to the rescue or shelter so they can have the dog’s health checked out. Sometimes it can be as simple as needing a diet change, and sometimes the dog may have immune system issues that need to be addressed.
