Fostering Again

So, I know I just talked about fostering, but wanted to touch on that shortly again.  We have... four foster homes at the moment.  Three for chins, one for a rabbit.  We had four for chins, and of course, always have people wanting to foster, but never enough cages. 

The fourth foster home had been fostering back in the spring, I want to say they started over the winter.  When their foster chin got adopted, they said they wanted to stop fostering for a period of time, as they were going on vacation and whatnot.  That was back around March-ish.

As of a few days ago, I hadn't heard from them, and so I wanted to check in with them.  Sent them an email and asked if they were still wanting to foster and what was their thoughts on that.  Also, they had actually bought a nicer cage for their foster chin, and so they had my cage to return to me, so I figured I would ask about this in an email as well, because of course, if I had my cage back, I could have someone else foster.

They emailed back promptly (yay) and said that they do want to foster again, just not right at this moment, as they are currently fostering some rabbits for a shelter more local to them.  They said they're unsure of when they can commit to foster, but potentially in the fall, and they will let me know.  They said they can mail the cage back, which is fine with me.

The reason I mention this is because I wanted to point out... our fosters don't have to foster forever.  In a perfect world, I'd rather someone foster at least until their foster animal is adopted, so that the critter doesn't go from here, to there, back to here... all in a short period of time.  If possible, of course, I do understand that things come up.  But the thing is, if someone wants to just foster one animal and then be done, that's fine.  Or just foster for a few months, or whatever.  It doesn't have to be a lifetime commitment to helping out, just whatever people can manage.

Of course, this all falls back on, there's only so many cages, so I can't have 40 fosters if I don't have 40 cages, but I mention this because I think sometimes people are worried about the time commitment, and it isn't always meant to be a forever thing.  Heck, if someone came and told me, they only wanted to foster for 6 months or something, that might change which chin is even getting fostered out.  See, I often foster out the problem cases or the ones that aren't doing well at the rescue, but I could foster out a nicer / friendlier one, if I knew someone was doing it more short-term.  Just some thoughts for today...