Howllo Fellow Hound and KY hound lovers.
Bluegrass Basset Rescue needs foster homes in KY! Do you think you can help? I asked Susan of Bluegrass to write a few words on what it takes to foster and her reply was to me within the hour.
Here it is:
To be a foster parent all one really needs to have is extra room in their hearts and home for a homeless basset 🙂 The foster home application is the adoption application because if you were to fall in love and not be able to bear to part with a basset you are fostering, that application would need to be in place before you could adopt. Foster homes get first dibs on adopting a hound in their care.
All we ask you to provide is the love and the food. We pay for medical expenses and monthly maintenance (heartworm and flea Rx.) There are some vets we prefer to work with in certain areas because of the rescue discount they generously extend to us, and we do ask that, barring an emergency, you contact us before taking a dog to a vet for something acute but not necessarily urgent. A limping basset, for instance, when you do not know the cause, is not an emergency. A basset pacing, drooling and swelled up–bloating–IS an emergency.
We do our best to send only healthy dogs, but sometimes we get dogs in who have been exposed to something that takes days to manifest itself. In the case of kennel cough, it can take 5 days for the symptoms to appear–even if they’ve been vaccinated–, and then we have to wait about 2 weeks past the date of the last antibiotic pill to re-vaccinate. If you were to foster a dog who has completed treatment, we’d schedule you to take the dog to the vet in a few weeks to get that bordatella vaccine. This might be prepaid at a certain vet or we’d reimburse you if you have a preferred vet with reasonable charges.
In the Louisville area, we generally receive dogs from Louisville Metro Animal Services and the Kentucky Humane Society. ALL dogs from these shelters are spayed/neutered and UTD on shots/vaccines before being picked up.
To inquire about fostering, just email Susan at froggie0310@bellsouth.net or call 270-890-0491. You can delete my signature off the bottom of the e-mail. I don’t know why that comes up.
Most bassets are in foster care for 3-6 weeks. If you prefer an older dog who can stay longer, we have those, too 🙂
Susan
*******************************************************************************
Thank you so much Susan for this wonderful information on becoming a KY foster parent. Let’s keep up the blogging. I hear you are going to have some new pictures soon of additional hounds needing homes, including some seniors! I cannot wait to see them and I will put them on this blog ASAP.
More Later…Cat, Chaps and Emma