Biography: We are delighted to welcome Kelly Motter as our featured Voice For Animals contributor. Kelly is the Creator, Host, and Producer of The Foster Files – A Podcast about Animal Rescue and Welfare. A passionate advocate for animal rescue, she and her husband have been fostering for three years and have come to love the work. Kelly started the podcast in 2025 as a way to learn more about the state of animal welfare in this country and to try to help expose the concerns to as many people as she can. Each week she discusses real issues surrounding animals with different people who are passionate about making their lives better. 

PA Shelters Are in Crisis, So Why Can’t You Foster? 

     The hard truth of the shelter crisis in the United States is that shelters and rescues are overflowing and hundreds of thousands of animals are euthanized each year as a result. According to BestFriends.org, 237,000 shelter dogs and 188,000 cats were killed in 2024 (2025 data not yet available). While it’s true that no one shelter, no one rescue, no one person, or no one piece of legislation can stop all of those deaths, there are things that an individual animal lover can do to ease that strain.

     One of the biggest impacts one can make on the shelter crisis is to offer their home to a shelter animal as a foster. Shelters across the country report that animals that spend time in foster homes have a much higher adoption rate than those that don’t. Shelters are noisy and stressful for animals, so the quiet calm of a home can help the rescue get important feedback about the animal’s true nature. That information helps the animal get better placement in a forever home.

     So why can’t you foster? What’s holding you back? Sure, you love animals, but fostering is a completely different level of commitment, and maybe you’re not ready for it. But maybe, just maybe you are, and the reasons you’ve told yourself you can’t foster just need to be thought about in a different way…

     As a foster for the last three years, I hear it all of the time: ‘I could never foster, I would get too attached!’ I get it! You fall in love with every dog you meet on the street, or every cute cat you see online, so the prospect of welcoming that animal into your home, caring for them, loving them, watching them open up to you and your family, only to send them to another home is too much for your heart to bear! Every foster volunteer I have ever met has cried over adoptions, but more times than not, the tears fall for different reasons than you think. Tears are shed because they are happy to watch the animal they love transition into their new, loving home. The pain to see them go is overshadowed by the knowledge that the animal is getting a fresh start to life and their home is now open to rescue again. Fosters don’t approach fostering as loving a dog or cat and watching them go to someone else; instead, most of us see ourselves as the temporary caregiver of this animal until their forever family comes along. We know that for every animal we foster, a life is literally saved. So, if you’re not fostering because you can’t say goodbye as that animal leaves for their new home, just think about the alternative. Without fosters, the animal you’re reserving your love for is living a stressed life in a noisy, crowded shelter, only to see the end of their life come without ever knowing the safety and comfort of a home. It may seem cruel to phrase it that way, but for 425,000 dogs and cats in 2024, that was the harsh reality.

     Perhaps you’re not like the people I talked about above. Maybe your reasons for not fostering are grounded in more practical things such as money, time, or uncertainty. Any reputable rescue or shelter will make sure that fostering is at no cost to you. They will provide you with food, crates, toys, medication, vet care, and any other resources you need for your foster animal.

      If it’s time in your day that holds you back, consider this: most shelter dogs spend 23 hours or more per day in their kennel with little to no attention or interaction. Your work day, where they can rest comfortably while you’re away, is a welcome gift for those pets. You’re giving far more to them by fostering than you are taking away by leaving them alone while you live your life.

     What about the uncertainty of the foster you’re bringing into your home? What if they’re listed as kid, cat, or dog friendly only to be scared, timid, avoidant, or worse, aggressive?!? It’s true, no assessment of an animal in shelter is perfect, and you may bring in an animal that doesn’t work with your family. In that case, reaching out to your rescue partner is the first place to start, but even before then, you should have been given plenty of information about how to safely introduce a new dog into your home with children and other pets. The fosters that I work with who have children tell me that their kids are even more involved with the foster dogs than they are! Ask the people around you how to make that successful. However, there are times where a dog just isn’t going to work in someone’s home; what then? In that case, you can absolutely return the dog to the shelter or rescue. Even the temporary break in that animal’s shelter life will see their likelihood of adoption increase exponentially.

     Fostering is not without its challenges, and not without any risk. We had a foster in 2023 that attacked our resident dog (he had minor injuries and was ok), and it was incredibly scary. I felt immense guilt for putting my resident dog through that trauma; it almost made me quit fostering. However, he healed, and so did I. I learned the right way to facilitate a new animal into my home, what behavior to look for, and how to work with the rescue to ensure success for everyone involved. Because of that situation, the rescue placed that dog in a loving single-dog home instead of one with other dogs where something even worse could have happened. So, even in a terrifying situation like that one, good can come from it.

     I’m not exaggerating when I say that fostering saves lives; we know that it does, but we need more homes, we need more volunteers, and we need more animal lovers to foster. If you want to learn more about fostering, animal rescue, and animal welfare, listen to my podcast The Foster Files – Stories About Animal Rescue and Welfare, and maybe you’ll see all the reasons why you can’t foster slowly fade away. – Kelly Motter 

This blog is printed here with permission from its author, Kelly Motter.