How fostering saves lives

There are many reasons why animals at the RSPCA may rely on a foster carer: awaiting the right age/ weight for desexing, recovering from surgery, not coping in the shelter environment, part of a cruelty case and much more.

Right as things got hectic in March with COVID-19, our team were under the pump to ensure every pet in our care had a loving family to self-isolate with. Well, the call out for new foster parents to help our animals, was well and truly received!

Our Foster Care Team received over 3,000 new applications to foster a pet. Incredible! But this also meant many days and weeks for our small crew to go through every application, match pets with potential temporary foster families, and get back to everyone!

For the first time in our history, RSPCA Queensland has temporarily suspended new applications to foster pets!

Needless to say it’s been a big effort, but it just shows that in times of need, the community will support the animals, and we’re truly grateful! If you have applied to foster an RSPCA pet and are still waiting to be paired with a pet, please don’t despair. Every year we need foster parents to assist a range of animals in need from birds, reptiles, livestock, horses, dogs and cats. We’ll be in touch with you when we have pets that may suit your lifestyle, family and home.

There are many reasons why animals at the RSPCA may rely on a foster carer: awaiting the right age and weight for desexing, recovering from surgery, not coping in the shelter environment, part of a cruelty case and much more.

This is why foster carers are so vital to us, they help change lives.

Rosie the Labrador

Hayley is currently fostering dear old Rosie the Labrador. She’s had a few surgeries after being picked up by our Animal Ambulance. She’s loving foster life post-surgery and we hope to see her available to adopt very soon!

Because we have more foster carers than animals currently (which is a wonderful situation to be in), we can’t guarantee that new foster carers will be asked to take an animal at this stage. However, we will always been in need of foster carers with specific lifestyles. Currently we are still looking for our ‘Unicorn’ Foster Carers - people that can take on our larger RSPCA dogs, have no pets or kids of their own and have 6 Foot fences. If that sounds like you, apply to be a foster carer today. Be sure to tell us straight up that you’re the unicorn we are looking for!

Karli and Jimmy

­­­First time dog foster carer, Karli, got to take home Jimmy recently… Due to COVID-19 lifestyle changes, Karli was even more motivated to help out with more time at home.