Page 45 - The Peorian, Vol 3 Issue 2
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To
find out a dog’s true
personality, watch
the animal in an
environment that doesn’t involve
cages or kennels.
That’s the idea behind the not
for profit Foster Pet Outreach,
a local organization that places
dogs and cats into foster care as
they wait to find their “forever
home.”
“There really is no better way
to find out how a dog or cat will
act around kids or other pets than
to let them interact with each
other. That helps the potential
adoptive family. But it also helps
the pets to thrive,” said Laurie
Bushell, president of the organi-
zation founded nearly 24 years
ago to help Peoria-area pets.
Foster Pet Outreach, or FPO,
was founded in 1990 by three
women who volunteered at area
animal shelters. It was while
doing so they began to realize
that many of the animals did
not interact well in that kind of
environment and thus often went
overlooked by families coming in
with adoption on their minds.
“They started the foster home
program and soon saw that the
pets, particularly dogs, began
to show their true personali-
ties. That helped them find out
such things as whether a dog
gets along with cats or does well
around children. It helped the
animal get rehabilitated and
ready for adoption,” Bushell said.
“We are a no-kill organization,
of course, and some pets may
never get adopted and live out-
side of foster care. But most will
and we consider every adoption a
big success.”
FPO works with area shelters
to take in pets and also will go
well beyond central Illinois when
called. For example, it works of-
ten with a shelter in Missouri and
some in Chicagoland. It also does
owner-relinquish cases when
owners realize they cannot care
for a pet but don’t want to send it
to a shelter.
Often the dogs or cats end up
being brothers and/or sisters and
they may get adopted together.
When people apply to adopt an
animal, “we usually tell them to
please find out as much as they
possibly can about the pet before
they take them. It can be heart-
breaking to have to take back a
pet we thought was in its forever
home,” she said.
Pets available for adoption
can be viewed on FPO’s website,
, on
the organization’s Facebook page
or on Pinterest. On the website,
too, are applications to adopt or
to be a pet foster parent.
Bushell said FPO is always
looking for foster parents and
that the more it has, the more
pets it can take in. “We could
have anywhere from two to 20
pets in foster care at any one
time, but our foster families reach
their limits and can’t take more or
they become what we call ‘foster
failures,’” she said.
Foster failures doesn’t mean
what it sounds like. It isn’t that
the pet became ill or escaped or
got sent to doggies jail. It means,
Bushell said, “that the foster fam-
ily realizes it has the one pet it
has been looking for and adopts
it themselves. We have all been a
foster failure and freely admit it.”
FOSTER PET OUTREACH
Looking to grow
By Paul Gordon
Not For Profit
Continued on page 46
