Fostering Confidence
Improve the adoptability of your Foster Dog by attending Fostering Confidence. This FREE Hands On Workshop for Rescue Volunteers, Foster Homes, and new adopters offered in Spring Hill, KS provides the must know info for reducing stress while handling and housing dogs safely. Learn canine communication signals, management strategies, and simple tips to quickly build trust with new animals in your home. Bringing a new dog into your home doesn’t have to bring stress along with it.
Why Fostering Confidence?
Fostering Confidence is a double entendre. On one hand it refers to the social needs that every dog has. The other hand represents the knowledge that rescue volunteers need to successfully home dogs. This information helps foster homes to raise mentally sound dogs that are safe to rehome. Confident and adaptable dogs are less likely to be returned by families ill-equipped to deal with common canine conundrums.
Where It All Began
We waited with eager anticipation in the lobby of a doggy daycare facility. We’d applied to foster for a local pit bull rescue and that day we were getting our first dog! A car door closed, toenails scraped on sidewalk, the lobby door squeaked open. In walked the biggest head on a knee high dog dragging his handler behind him! His name was Lucius. The scars on his head reflected his troubled past. He had been rescued from a dog fighting ring and it showed.
In that moment everything I’d ever heard about the nature of pit bulls flashed into my mind. Lucius was nervous and excited and so were we. What had we gotten ourselves into? That day in 2009 was our first foray into the world of dog rescue. As a bleeding heart I wanted to help dogs but we had no idea what we were getting into. As a fledgling dog trainer, I wanted to teach dogs what they needed to know to find them great homes. As dog owners Lucius challenged every attempt we made to live peacefully with dogs!
A Blissfully Naive Family
Not your average dog
Lucius, a former fighting dog in the pits of Chicago, had a whole luggage ensemble of baggage and PTSD from his former life. His willingness to eat through doors, destroy kennels, and his obsessive consumption of soft toys and clothing made him hard to contain. His hair trigger around certain dogs presented costly challenges in housing him safely around other dogs. Because of those challenges, Lucius stayed with us until 6 years later when we could no longer maintain his quality of life or house him safely. Rehoming him was not an option and returning him to the rescue to let his mental health deteriorate further while languishing in a kennel seemed worse than the alternative.
Like many rescue dogs, Lucius was a perfect mess. Because of our experience and the lack of support we received while he was in foster care Fostering Confidence was developed. We here to give back to the rescue community and help other foster families avoid some of the costly mistakes we made due to lack of knowledge.
How Fostering Confidence Helps
Since Lucius, dozens of dogs have taken up temporary residence in our home. While some stays have been shorter than others all have brought with them various degrees of stress and struggle. Now, all those lessons learned over the years are compiled in one place. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel! Take our experiences and increase fostering success while decreasing stress.
What Fostering Confidence Entails
Rescue programs are only as strong as their volunteers. Fostering Confidence seminars are designed to empower both novice and experienced dog handlers. The knowledge gained from these workshops helps families make great decisions for the dogs in their care. Budget friendly and low stress solutions give foster dogs an advantage in a competitive rehoming market. We know from first hand experience what it takes to foster dogs successfully.
Simple Solutions
Our trainers present management and integration strategies that set their home and foster dogs up for success. Minimizing stress and building trust quickly calm the nervous system of dogs in transition. Learn how to mitigate unnecessary risk. Proactively teach your foster dog the skills they’ll need to integrate successfully into their forever home. Preventing bad habits is far easier than correcting them once they’ve taken root.
Hands On Learning
Each workshop features a ‘Demo’ Foster Dog. Learn about canine communication patterns to better understand the needs of each dog. Practice Leash Handling and trust building exercises on live dogs! Question & Answer and trouble shooting opportunities help attendees address specific struggles in their home.
Predictable Patterns
Common and frustrating behavior challenges follow predictable behavior patterns. We can anticipate that dogs with poor management will be able to engage in certain undesirable behaviors. By that same token dogs experiencing high levels of stress may become reactive, or even bite when placed in overwhelming circumstances. That’s why it is important to provide consistent boundaries and predictability in the environment. Routine increases predictability which allow feelings of safety to take route and grow. Carefully and intentionally structured interactions between existing and new inhabitants ensure peaceful integrations.
Reducing nervous system activation and feelings of flight or fight are essential for reducing separation anxiety, resource guarding, and dog and human reactivity. Increased knowledge of behavior patterns and handling skills increase adoptability! Your skills (or lack thereof) can make or break a rescue dog’s opportunity for integrating successfully into a new home. Establish patterns of predictability immediately for new guests in the home. As the first point of contact with adopters you’ll be able to offer immediate guidance for rehoming success. Reiterate simple suggestions, ad nauseum! Help new owners address their issues efficiently and increase the chances that your foster dog will remain in their forever home. The right advice at the right time can help keep a dog from returned for an otherwise fixable or preventable issue.
Owning Accountability
Fostering dogs, particularly in high volumes, requires a large degree of accountability. These are not your pets but the potentially brief period they spend with you will leave a mark on your heart. Make sure you leave a mark on them that will serve them beneficially in the years to come. Acting proactively makes life easier for you, your family, your foster dog, and the future adopters. The average dog owner can frequently get away with being a passive participant in their relationship with their dog. When things go wrong they may consider hiring a trainer for help. Foster parents must take the wheel to provide the structure and discipline that dogs require for health and wellness.
When housing multiple fosters at one time, as many foster homes do, the risk of inaction increases exponentially. Mixing the wrong dogs, not giving appropriate space, or adequate decompression time between placement can go very badly, very quickly. Trauma, once established, can not be erased. Therefore it is important to take responsibility for all actions and specifically reject those that lend avoidable and unnecessary risks.
Sign up for Fostering Confidence
Fostering Confidence will bring awareness of avoidable issues to the light, allowing you and other household inhabitants to make better handling decisions. Join the class and network with other volunteers from rescues around the Kansas City Metro. Ask your questions and address relevant fostering needs with applicable and practical solutions.