Important

Children must be at least 8  to participate in dog walking and each child must have a legal guardian with them (one on one) every time they come to help. 

Children aged 14-17 need for a parent or legal guardian to be present at  orientation & to sign a hold harmless waiver.  The level of parental involvement following orientation it is subject to evaluation by JRs staff after orientation.

Is Fostering right for my family??

Here are some high level details about our program as our Foster’s have a lot of responsibility in the care of their animal.  This does not change with the current circumstances.  

Here is a short list of the primary responsibilities of a JRs Foster:

• Attend training (2 1/2 hrs typically) all teens and adults in household must attend, these are held online.
• After training a virtual home visit with a seasoned foster to talk thru remaining questions and to walk through the physical space, looking for areas that may result in damage to your belongs or potentially harm a dog
• Upon approval, pickup a foster at the facility in West Allis (along with all the supplies that will be provided such as food, medication, crate, toys, etc)
• Administer medication and record it on our software system (very important)
• Advertise, advertise, advertise- our main objective is to get the pups into their furever home as fast as we can.  This involves updating their descriptions visible on our website, Facebook and other social media sites.  
• Work on basic training as most of the animals rescued have never been in a home, felt a loving touch,  and are often flight risks. This involves crate training and house training. (This sometimes involves re-organizing things in the home to accommodate accidents as well as practicing patience)
• Provide transportation to the office or vet when medical tasks are needed.  
• Commitment to keep your foster until adopted.  It is very important that we minimize the amount of disruption in our pup’s lives.  When you agree to foster with us you agree that you are willing and able to keep this dog in your home “for the duration”.  Depending on the dog, this may be 2 weeks or it may be 2 months or longer. Please be sure that when your life returns to normal (post Covid) that you will be able to remain their foster until they are adopted.
• Conduct meets with adopters.  JRs does require in-person meeting for all members of the adopting family to visit the dog at the foster’s home.  You need to be comfortable with potential adopters coming to your home and visiting with the dog while you are observing (meets can be done outdoors).  Please ensure that you are not a high risk vulnerable person or have someone in your household who may be prone to exposure due to their profession.
• Be informed that the adoption path and the foster path at JRs are completely separate and do not coincide. If interested in adopting it is a separate application process and Foster’s cannot adopt their own first 3 fosters
• MOST important-vigilant monitoring of your foster for health and wellness. Transitioning to a new place is hard on dogs, and the distress is often physical symptoms in the form of diarrhea, worms, lack of appetite etc. Your quick identification of health issues can make a difference in their survival.  
   

If it feels like this  might be more responsibility and a longer commitment than you were anticipating, no worries!!  We have other critical volunteer opportunities at this time. 

• Computer entry for the computer savvy - help get applicants entered into our system.
• Make some phone calls- background, landlord and vet checks.
• Adopter home visits via Skype or Facetime.  Because of the concerns with social interactions we are doing home visits virtually (as well as in person) and we’d love to have some virtual comfortable people help with the visits (We do have training for this available)

What we do

Application Input team:

• Data entry of all applicants 18 years or older into our web based system.  This includes name, date of birth, address, phone, email and adding a copy of the application. 

Checks team:

• All applicants, 18 or older, a background check is performed on them using publicly available sites.
• Any applicant that rents, a phone call (or email) to their landlord to determine if they can have pets and what restrictions, if any, for those pets
• Any applicant that has or has had in the past 10 years, a call to their vet to verify that their pets are up to date on vaccines, wellness exams.  This is for all pets, living and deceased that the applicant had in the past 10 years.
   

What you need to have:

• A computer and/or tablet.  If you have only a tablet, application input is difficult as it does require copying the entire application from one system and pasting it into another.  We have found that most people have trouble using only a tablet for this. 
• Availability to commit to minimally 3 days per week, for approximately 2 hours per day.
• For background, landlord and vet checks, your availability must be during BUSINESS hours.  Vet clinics and property management companies keep business hours and we need to be able to connect with them during those times.