How Much Does It Cost To Euthanize A Dog

>> kate:have you ever thought about fostering a pet? well, today on the paw report, we'll talkto jill mcdevitt from genesis animal rescue about what you might need to know before consideringit. that's coming up next on the paw report, so grab your favorite cuddly pal, i've gotteddy and toby here and stay tuned. [music]welcome to the paw report, i am your host

How Much Does It Cost To Euthanize A Dog, kate pleasant, and today we are talking aboutfostering pets, and i am here with jill mcdevitt who works with genesis animal rescue, youare actually on the board there right? >> jill:yes, >> kate:and you also foster pets?

>> kate:ok so tell me first what is fostering, for people who aren't familiar with the fosteringprocess for pets >> jill:well, it's it's similar to the fostering children people ask me that all the time. it's dogsor cats that come into our program that are in need they don't have a home for whateverreason, and we don't have a facility where we keep dogs, like an animal control. we keepthem all into our volunteer's homes, so we would take a dog or cat into our home, basicallycare for it like our own pet, and then answer questions for adoptees, somebody that mightbe interested in adopting that pet. >> kate:ok, and so it is the kind of thing where people

contact you organization with animals andthen you kind of distribute them to your volunteers? >> jill:yes, more, more often than not, they come through our director, she actually happensto be a vet tech at a local animal veterinary office, and so she gets a lot of pets thatway. somebody comes in they can no longer care for their pet, or a stray that has beenhurt, hit by a car comes into the office, and then a lot of times she will take it in,and do the vet care, and then put it out to a foster home.>> kate: ok, and how many volunteers are involved withgenesis? so how many people foster animals? >> jill:oh we have probably about 10 to 12 fosters,

but not usually not all at one time becausepeople get burned out, people get busy in their regular life, and need to take a breakfrom fostering. so we have some volunteers that just had new babies, and so they arenot fostering for right now. >> kate:ok, and so what is you know emotionally to foster a pet. because i know, for me i think,oh i would love to take these animals into my home, but i'm afraid i wouldn't be ableto let them go when someone wanted to adopt them.>> jill: that's one of the most common questions peopleask me. is how can you do it, how can you give them up and we kind of laugh in our organization.there's a what we call a foster to own program

or a failed foster home.and everybody does it occasionally, but you can't continue to do that or you would notbe able to keep fostering. and what we keep telling ourselves is thatby fostering this animal, we are saving an animal's life that might have been euthanized,might not have had a home, and it needs its own home.and if we keep taking them in, it's not a special home, if we have 10 or 12 dogs, thenthat dog, that new dog doesn't have a special place in our heart.we want to give it a special place by having a home of it's own. so it is sad, but it'sa happy kinda sad. >> kate:ok, and are there advantages then with fostering

as maybe those people that are fostering learnthe animal behaviors and then can better relate them to someone who wants to adopt, ratherthan say maybe a dog that is in a shelter? >> jill:that's the biggest advantage to being a foster home based program, is that we can assessthe dog, we can see the veterinary care that it might need, we would be able to be in tunefinding lumps and bumps things like that, we can work on housebreaking, work on basicsit, down, potty training, or i should say house-breaking. we call it potty traininga lot. >> kate:it's like children. >> jill:it is like children. and then like you said,

when a potential adopter calls, and says youknow, i am really interested in this dog, i think he's beautiful, i have these children,and i can say you know i really don't think this dog would be happy with you, becauseyou know, he really hates children or he needs this or he needs that.so it's not based on looks. because you know sometimes if you go to the animal shelter,you just see a dog, and you can fall in love with the looks, but when you get it home,and you don't match. >> kate:right. so it's really kind of a matching process >> jill:right. >> kate:for people and animals, let alone just the

animals.>> jill: right. we are looking for things like activitylevel, what the dog would like, whether they prefer a woman or a man sometimes, you knowsome dogs just really are going to bond to a woman or bond to a man, and so we tell themthat. some dogs just have to have another dog. thatare so elated to play with another dog, that they would not have a good life, if they didn'thave another dog, or they would drive their new home crazy.>> kate: right right. and so what would you say tosomeone who is considering fostering. what do they need to think about?>> jill:

well, they need to think about, like you said,wanting to keep them all. and need to realistically think can i do this?can i emotionally provide care and fall in love, and then and then give them up.especially if you have children, because children can't understand that and you know why doesa dog come and then he goes you know, and he might, smaller children it might upsetthem. >> kate:umhmm >> jill:you need to make sure you have enough time, because it does take some time, and it takessome time away from your regular pets. >> kate:sure.

>> jill:because if you know you have a new foster dog that needs some training, needs some exercise,needs walking, you may have to take care of it rather than maybe walking your own dog,so you have to think, is your own dogs going to be able to handle that?>> kate: i guess you would have to consider if youown dogs would get along with another dog. >> jill:definitely. i had been interested in fostering for a long time, but was only able to startfostering in 2005 after my dog passed away with cancer. he was very dog agressive andwould not tolerate another dog in his house. and so i , i did not foster until after hewas gone.

>> kate:ok so theres a lot to consider between dogs, children, time, training>> jill right, and you have to have enough dog savvy,if you are doing dogs, or you know, or cats, is bringing different animals into your house,being able to see signals, you know, making sure they are going to not have a dog fight,you know those types of things, you have to be pretty dog savvy and be able to meld themin. >> kate:ok, and i assume there would be some sort of cost associated with this as well, to thefoster parent, is that something the organization helps with, or do you also need to be sureyou are financially able to support this.

>> jill:typically, we don't ask anything financially from the foster.we do all the veterinary care, the only thing that we would possibly ask from the fosterhome, is to transport the dog to and from vet appointments if there is, or to and fromadoption events in the area. >> kate:ok >> jill:but we we are very lucky, we get a lot of donations of food, toys, beds, those typesof things we make those available to foster homes.>> kate: ok it is something that if you are considering,you wouldn't have to consider too much of

a cost then, okand what about where do all the animals come from? you kinda covered it earlier, strays,going into veterinary offices, do they come in from other shelters?>> jill: they do, every group is different how theyget theirs, but for us, we get some as i said that we need to come into veterinary officethat has been hurt, hit by a car, that type of thing will cover it, and rehab them.we have people coming in to veterinary offices actually we had one ths week, that were goingto euthanize their pets because they were moving and could not find a home for them.which was very very sad. and they were having to you know, they losttheir home, and so we take in you know hard

hard luck cases like that.we have people contact us through the website that they no longer can keep their animals,again with this economy, people are having to move, people are having to move into apartments,losing their houses. we have strays, for cats, we have a lot of people you know there's alot of stray cats, people will catch them, you know, especially the kittens, we get themspayed and neutered, and get them out into ok so>> jill: a variety of places, and we also as you pointed,as you mentioned, there are some animal control facilities that maybe don't have the way toget adoptions as much, they are just small locall animal controls, or even in other areasor other states and we pull from those shelters

where dogs and cats are at risk of being euthanizedbecause there's not adoptive people coming in to look at them. so we'll pull those also.>> kate ok. can you kind of talk to us about whatyour first fostering experiences was like? you know, what was it like when they broughtthe animal to your home, and how does it how did it kind of work?>> jill: well, i had just called the volunteer, andi had a meeting with a director, and she happened to have, she found out i had a lot of dogexperience, i used to teach training classes, so she asked me to, they had a special needsdog that was very very shy and asked me to do that, but of course, before i could dothat, she, we have to have a home visit, because

they you know they just met me, didn't knowanything about me. so first the director came to my home with the dog, inspected my home,not, for cleanliness, not for anything like that, but just to make sure that you knowi was who i said i was, my own pets were in good care, and that my family members, myhusband was also in agreement, because we want to make sure everybody>> kate: right>> jill: so they brought the little puppy in and satand talked with me for a while before they left.that was a lot of fun. though that unfortunately, my first fosteringexperience did not have a happy ending.

unfortunately we found out that the dog wasvery very ill, that is why he was shy, and so did not make it.that was very hard as a first foster. >> kate:sure sure, but you still decided you would go on and do it>> jill: that i would go on and do it, because it mademe realize that there is something that i can give back.that one of my abilities, is that i can nurture pets, and give them love and care and so itjust opened a space then for my next one. >> kate:i know you used to kind of write about some of your experiences with animals.can you kind of talk about,

i know i read one of your posts about a typicalday in the life of a dog rescuer and it was pretty humerous.do you want to share that story? it just gives people a good idea of what is can really belike when you have foster pets at your home. >> jill:right. yeah. and sometimes you can have more than one foster pet, you know you don't haveto and in my case a lot of times i have a couple or three coming in or out of my houseand i have of course, pets of my own. and and you have to have the stomach for fostering,because you are going to have messes. you know, we talked about house breaking anda lot of most pets do not have, are not house broken when they come here, and so i , theone that i talked about that you mentioned

and woke up on the morning and i walked outin the living room and somebody had pooped on the living room floor, so i went to gettissues to clean that up and i came back out and then somebody i found a place where somebodyhad peed on the floor and so ahhhh, so i went and i cleaned that up, and then i was continuingto get ready, and another dog came and told me they wanted to go out, which was good,but when i went back in the llviing room, somebody had thrown up on the living roomcarpet. this was all in one morning, so i scrubbedthe carpet, you know, let the dogs out and then i had already, had all ready to go towork, and i went into the dining room, and there was like a lake of pee on my diningroom floor, and i just couldn't believe all

that could happen in one morning. but it itdoes. and so i was very happy then that day to go to work, where there was no body waspeeing or pooping >> kate:on my floor, >> jill:on my office floor, but it is true, there are some cases, i mean housebreaking is themajor reason why dogs are given up, and they are at the shelters, so thats a foster homeis one of their main duties, is housebreaking, so you have to be ready for that.>> kate: so you have to consider that could be somethingthat happens for a long time everyday. >> kate:so, its a patience thing.

>> jill:very much, especially if you foster puppies, there's just a lot of cleaning up, and youhave to think about you know, do you have white carpet, you know.if you are a very nit-picky housekeeper, and want everything just so, fostering probablyisn't going to be for you, because there is going to be messes.>> kate: what are some other things that people aregoing to need to consider when fostering? is there a certain length of stay? is therecertain kinda of an average there? >> jill:things to think about is the length of stay of course, an ideal, the minimum would betwo weeks, we would get them in, we would

get the vet care, get them spayed, neutered,have them up on the website, interview potential adopters, do the whole process, minimum istwo weeks. we just placed a dog though last week, thatwe had for a year and a half. >> kate:wow. ok. so those kind of integrate into being part of those foster families' family.>> jill: yes, it is, and that one was very hard, andvery hard for her to lose, and she you know really had to get active in doing somethingelse too, to keep her mind off of losing that baby. it was like a family pet.>> kate: so what's it like when you take a dog to youknow like an adoption event?

is that you know, a lot of public events forthat? is it. >> jill:we do, we do local pet stores, especially, and some events on our own, like we've hadsome art events, and some groups that want to do things for us.we usually have each we hope to have each foster mom bring their pet, their dog or cat,so that they can answer questions when the public comes up, because they know them best.but if they don't then we have information written about what those, that pet likes anddislikes. we answer a lot of questions, but we don'tdo any same-day adoptions at events. we like to talk to a lot of people, tell themabout that pet, tell them about all the different

pets, help educate them on what they are lookingfor, you know, if they say oh this is a cute fluffy little white puppy, i want this cutefluffy white puppy, we start asking questions, about well, how long do you work and do youhave time for this and we start helping them educate what's the best pet for them.>> kate: ok>> jill: but we do we go ahead and take applicationsfor them and then we, we always want them to think, we don't want impulse buying.>> kate: right.>> jill: because> kate:

sleep on it type>> jill: you want to sleep on it, and like i said,just like we do home visits, for foster home, we do home visits for people that want toadopt, >> kate:permanent placements. >> jill:permanent places. we want to meet the spouses and the children to make sure that everybodyis in agreement because we don't want a spouse to surprise another spouse with look honeyi brought a puppy home. so we want to know that it's a welcome member.>> kate: umhmm ok, so when you are fostering a pet,is it the kind of thing where sometimes you

have ones that just don't work out?>> jill: yes. every foster home is different in ourorganization. in what they like and don't like and we take that into consideration.>> kate: sure>> jill: we don't put a german shepherd at our onefoster home that she has little yappy dogs, and you know that would not work.>> kate: we have different people that like or don'tlike different breeds. like i will foster rat terriers, and nobody else in our organizationthey all hate that breed, and so i'll take the rat terriers. and so we'll have peoplewill you know, do very much do cats, and are

very educated very good at cats, but if youever get a foster and you are like ok this is not working, we are not you know we arenot seeing eye to eye and this, or he's not getting along my dogs, or cats, they the fosterjust contacts one of the board members, and we just make a swap.>> kate: ok>> jill: and same type of thing if you are going togo on vacation and you have a long term foster, maybe that doesn't have an adoption pending,then typically, we like to use another foster home.>> kate: rather than trying to get them boarded and>> jill:

right. and we do, we are very, also very luckythat the local boarding places will work with us, and will provide some free short termboarding for us in a situation where we don't have a foster home available and we have apet in need. >> kate:ok, so what do you like best about fostering for someone that's maybe considering doingit? >> jill:i love to see the change, like the before and after.often times when the pet comes to our care, not only are they physically ill, they haveyou know sore, or they are matted, and they are dirty, and they have fleas, but the lookin their eyes is so down-trodden, and so void

of hope,>> kate: and then to take them and and gain their trust,show them how fun life can be in the right home, and show them toys, and fluffy beds,and walks, balls, and toys, and all those kinds of things, and to see the turn aroundof their personality, and see their eyes sparkle. that's really where i see it when they'llactually wag their tail, and their eyes sparkle and when they see the hope of what life canbe. >> kate:ok and there's probably all kinds of different volunteers, do you find that your volunteersare all kinds of people. busy people, or retired people?>> jill:

oh definitely, and we need all different kinds,and we have volunteers, obviously fosters, but we people that don't want to do fosters,we have volunteers opportunities for them, we do fund-raising, we do dog washes, we need,you know adoption information written up, nice little stories, for our website, websitehelp and everything, and it's really nice that we have people with all these differentskills that step up, do what they can do, and we especially like retired homes, becausethey have a little bit more time, and so for the dogs or cats, that needs some specialcare, the people that have the extra time to be able to do some training, to do somerehab, it's really nice to have that. >> kate:well, they are home all day, so there' plenty

of attention that they can probably sharewith those animals, and it's probably some company for them as well.>> jill: oh definitely.>> kate: so that's probably a good thing, too, butare there a lot of foster organizations in this area?we have a pretty wide viewing area, are there a lot of fostering organizations around?>> jill: definitely.i think that the tide is really changing. even in local animal control.used to be local animal control they were just you know, they threw them in there, theydidn't do anything if somebody happened to

come and wanted to adopt them, and that'sgreat and if not you know, they didn't. but now, all the organizations really areopen to foster homes, especially for special needs. you know, some labs, they can do finein animal control, but a little chihuahua, or a bichon, they are scared to death, andthey are cold, and they are wet in the shelters, so they really thrive in a foster home, andso a lot of organizations are doing that now. and that's actually an easier way to set upa new rescue, is most people when you first starting think i am going to do a rescue,i am going to work with my group of friends, and we are going to rescue animals, you don'thave the capital to make it a building, so foster homes, is the way to go.we are licensed with the state, and which

is very minimal fee for licensing for fosterhomes, and it's it's definitely the way to go.>> kate: so you definitely see that as a trend, andi can understand that, i suppose, i mean, as opposed to you know the county developingan animal shelter, and having to put up a physical structure.>> jill right.>> kate: they may maybe'll pick up these animals andthen distribute them after they get the care they need.>> jill: right, and then, and also we know so muchmore about them when you foster them.

and you can give you can do a much bettermatch, because you see their personalities, and also, the shelter's just not a good placeto gauge personality in animals because an animal that might be a wonderful loving dogat at home, is afraid or aggressive at the shelter because all the barking dogs.>> kate: sure, they have anxiety.>> jill: a lot of anxieties, so you don't really knowhow they are going to act, and may be passed over, when they really shouldn't be at theshelter, so >> kateso it is the kind of thing again that goes back to matching.>> jill:

yes definitely,>> kate: it also allows for better personality matchingbetween owners and pets >> jill:right. and if you do that to begin with then they don't get returned.but and we always do take any returns. our pets are for life, in that if for anyreason after we adopt a pet to somebody, and it doesn't work out, they have a traumaticlife event, you know, somebody in their family gets sick, or ill, that they can't and aren'tgoing to be home, the older person goes into a nursing home, whatever reason, we always,the dog always, or cat always comes back to us.>> kate:

ok. so even if you are not in our area, youknow and you are not familiar with the rescues maybe, you can contact, i am sure people whohave looked for various rescue organizations can contact your local animal control, theyare probably going to know >> jill:definitely contact your local animal control, see if they are in need of volunteers or fostering.pet finder is a wonderful website that has, that you can find who all is in your area.>> kate: ok, so there is resources available out thereas well, so it just takes a minute to think about them.like we said before, if you are considering fostering a pet, there are many many thingsto consider.

>> jill:many. definitely. >> kate:well, jill mcdevitt, from genesis animal rescue, we appreciate you coming in and talking aboutfostering pets today. and hopefully, we will be able to talk to you again sometime.>> jill: thanks kate[music] [toy squeaks]have a video or a photo of your pet doing something funny or absolutely adorable? we'dlove to share it with our viewers here at the paw report. email it to me kate at kfpleasant@eiu.eduand you could see it on our show. just make sure it is a video taken by you or that youhave permission to share. for more information

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