Have you noticed an explosion in the popularity of fostering within the last few years? In this episode, we travel back about 200 years to understand the history behind animal shelters and the animal welfare movement. We’ll get a grasp on where we’ve been to better understand the rise of fostering and its importance in animal services.
Learn from foster experts Kristen Hassen, Kelly Duer, and Sarah Brasky about how you can help save more lives and be part of the most exciting revolution in animal welfare history.
Featuring conversations with…
American Pets Alive! – @americanpetsalive
Maddie's Fund – @maddiesfund
Available wherever you listen to podcasts
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This episode was produced and hosted by Stacey Axelrod, with production assistance from Kate Trahan, Lauren Cattan, Daniela Escobar Blaines, and Sarah Brasky.
Sound mixing and mastering by Jack Braglia.
Why We Foster was created by NYC Pet Photographer Stacey Axelrod and brought to you by Foster Dogs, the leading organization in creating positive, inclusive foster communities.
Support the show with a donation to Foster Dogs!
Transcript:
Kristen Hassen: Working in the nineties in animal welfare, it was still a pretty brutal field. Most animals came into the shelter and were quickly killed. The rule back then was any animal over four and any animal under three months, I think, was basically automatically euthanized. And the shelter where I worked, the euthanasia rate was somewhere between 80 and 90%. I know this is a rather gruesome way to start off a podcast, but our history is really pretty gruesome.
Stacey Axelrod: Hello, I'm Stacey Axelrod, and that was one of the foremost experts in animal welfare, Kristen Hassen. She is currently the Maddie's Director of American Pets Alive!, which is a national program of Austin Pets Alive!, providing outreach, education, and hands-on support to shelters across the country.
Kristen has spent nearly a decade running and revolutionizing large, open admission, municipal animal shelters all over the United States. First was Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Virginia, then Austin Animal Services in Texas, and most recently...
Kristen Hassen: Pima Animal Care Center, in Tucson, Arizona, where we had the nation's largest municipal pet foster program, sending about 5,500 animals to foster a year. I left there in October to take this job helping the rest of the nation implement the Human Animal Support Services programs, including, uh, The Foster-Centric Model.
Stacey Axelrod: After receiving national recognition for her life-saving work in those communities, Kristen is now leading a national movement that is re-imagining the institution of animal services and the role of animal shelters. The coalition driving that movement is called Human Animal Support Services, or HASS for short, and it is a very hot topic in the animal rescue world right now.
Kristen Hassen: It's really taking the best of what's been happening in animal welfare for the last five-ish years and bringing it all together. It's a huge collaborative effort with virtually every major national organization to transform animal services. And the ultimate goal is to keep families together and to do everything we can to support the human-animal bond.
Historically, in order to help an animal, animal shelters had to remove that animal from its home, its community, and its person or people. It had to be separated in order to be helped. And that is ethically and morally wrong when we have so many better alternatives now.
And so the goal of HASS is to make helping the person and animal the first line of defense. It's the first thing we try to do. And so you only remove the animal from its home, its community, and its family if that is truly the best thing for the animal and we don't have any other alternatives.
The Foster-Centric Model really positions foster at the heart of operations. So fostering becomes as important as adoption, as important as volunteering. It becomes a primary function of the organization with the goal of sending 50% or more of animals to foster at any time. So in a big shelter, that meant that we typically had 500 to a thousand animals in foster at any time.
Stacey Axelrod: We're living through a major moment in animal welfare history and fostering is right at the center of it. But in order to understand why fostering is so important right now, we have to first understand where it all started and recognize how far we've come.
On this episode of Why We Foster, we're traveling back about 200 years to understand the fascinating history of animal shelters in the United States. From there, we'll take a look at how we got to where we are today, recognizing how 2020 launched fostering into the national spotlight, securing its place at the center of a bright future caring for animals, ourselves, and our communities.
Sensitive Content Warning
So remember how Kristen said that our history is pretty gruesome? Well, she's right. And there's no way around it, so we gotta go through it. But first, a quick warning: some may find aspects of the following topics distressing. If you would like to skip this content, please jump ahead about three minutes in this episode.
If you're sticking with me, then here we go! And I promise... there is light at the end of this tunnel... and puppies and kittens, and large-scale social change, and science, and a little bit of magic.
Kristen Hassen: I started in animal welfare in 1999, working at a shelter in Ohio and I lasted, five to six months in that job. I ended up having sort of a nervous breakdown. Uh, virtually every animal I helped to rescue was brought back to the shelter and killed. And, I had a dog that I just adored and I walked in while it was being euthanized, I walked into the room it just, it kind of broke me and I, I ran out of the shelter, I physically sprinted out of the shelter. And I spent a couple of years just kind of recovering from that and, um, you know, swearing off animal welfare, I never thought I'd work in an animal shelter again. And so it was quite surprising when I found myself back in an animal shelter in 2013.
Stacey Axelrod: Even though Kristen literally ran away from her first job in a shelter, when she returned 14 years later, that traumatic experience became the inspiration she needed to reform the system.
Kristen Hassen: I mean, that experience has pretty much motivated everything that's come since. I think that it served as a catalyst for how we needed to break free from the past. The way that animal shelters were built, the reasons they were built for, to gather up and exterminate animals, that was still really present, that was still underlying everything we did. And actually today, I think most of what we do, what underlies it, is this history of catch and extermination of animals.
Stacey Axelrod: That history goes all the way back to the mid-1800s when the United States started urbanizing. People flooded into cities and brought all sorts of animals with them. Cows, pigs, and packs of stray dogs roamed freely in the streets while thousands of overworked horses powered the Industrial Revolution.
Things got a little out of control for a bit, and that led to the need for animal welfare regulation and animal population control. Dogs became the focus of that animal control when an outbreak of hydrophobia, the virus now known as rabies, led to widespread fear and panic in those newly urbanized cities.
Kristen Hassen: And so this was the birth of the modern, um, dog pound movement, and in big cities like New York and Boston and Philadelphia, they would do these massive roundups of dogs. And and the numbers in the 1860s in New York were like, a thousand dogs at a time would get rounded up. And in New York they would get drowned, um, in the Hudson river, in these giant cages. And in other cities they would get shot or they would get poisoned. Between the 1850s and the 1970s, it more or less operated the same. It's where the terminology like animal control, dog pound, and dog catcher come from.
Stacey Axelrod: Now, I want to make it clear that today's animal shelters are nothing like those institutions of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Remember, this was a time when it was totally normal for children to work in factories and essentially illegal for women to wear pants. Life was pretty awful for everyone except rich white men. And as for dogs? Well, life was pretty terrible for them too, unless they happen to be owned by a rich white man.
Kristen Hassen: There was a lot of debate around what to do with owned dogs. The owning class always had dogs and those dogs oftentimes had value. And The problem was... if you rounded up every loose dog, then you were rounding up some rich people's dogs as well. And so this is where we see licensing coming in. The cost of a early license tag was between one and $2, which is an exorbitant amount of money, uh, much, much more than most working class and poor people would have ever been able to pay. So licensing was only accessible to people that owned of the owning class who had purebred dogs. And so if those dogs were licensed, they would get a chance to get out of the pound, whereas the dogs that were not licensed wouldn't.
And if you want to know more about this history, you need go no further than Lady and the Tramp, that shows perfectly how the system operated in the scene in the dog pounds.
Kristen is referring to the original 1955 version of Disney's Lady and The Tramp, an animated film about a pampered Cocker Spaniel named Lady who falls in love with Tramp, a stray mutt who prefers a footloose and collar-free lifestyle.
In the dog pound scene, we see the dog catcher's horse-drawn wagon arriving at the shelter, which is mostly hidden behind a ramshackle wooden fence. There are signs that read, "give a dog a happy home" and "nice puppies", but the barbed wire and heavy padlock don't give off such a welcoming vibe.
Inside, a quartet of dogs behind iron bars and chewed up wooden beams lead all of the pound dogs in a mournfully sad, howling song. Meanwhile, a goofy little Dachsund is furiously digging a tunnel so they can all escape.
They're one chorus away from freedom when the dog catcher walks in with Lady trailing behind him on a rope. He puts her in one of the kennels, slamming the heavy door shut while he goes to check her license number.
The pound dogs rush up to her and immediately notice her bright blue collar and shiny gold license tag. They tease her, call her Miss Park Avenue, and corner her until some older, wiser dogs intervene. Boris the Borzoi and Peg the Pekinese explain to Lady that wearing a license in the pound is like "waving a red flag in front of a bull" because it's a dog's "passport to freedom".
If you're like me and you haven't seen this movie since you were very young, I recommend doing a quick search for this scene. Just make sure it's not the 2019 live action remake of the film. The dog pound scene in that version is very different than it was in the 1955 film, particularly due to the egregiously, racist personalities and accents of the pound dogs in the original version. But for all they got wrong in that original film, their depiction of early 1900s animal shelters was quite accurate.
Sarah Brasky: These shelters were not necessarily built to be welcoming, cozy places. They were built to house animals until they either got adopted or had to be put down, or maybe for legal quarantine purposes. But they were not built to be fuzzy, customer service, happy places.
Stacey Axelrod: That's Sarah Brasky, the Founder of Foster Dogs and a producer on this show. While we were working on this episode, we had some very interesting conversations about our past experiences in animal rescue. Here, Sarah shares a story from 2010.
Sarah Brasky: I was volunteering at the New Haven Animal Shelter in Connecticut. It was a police run shelter, part of their jurisdiction. The experience of walking in... it was, it was a little cold. And you see a big police sign when you walk in the door. There was nowhere to sit. There was zero meet and greet area for people interested in adopting a dog. And maybe some people are a little nervous stepping foot in an unwelcoming building that has 'police' on the front door.
So I knew that there was potential for change and I was really passionate about doing something without breaking the bank, without having to do a big fundraiser, just something that was really accessible with a lot of elbow grease. I was already involved with The Friends of the New Haven Animal Shelter, so I proposed this idea to them. I recruited community help, we got Benjamin Moore to donate cans of paint, my mom designed murals, and we got pizza. Everyone grouped together...
And over the course, of a couple of days, we repainted the whole lobby, we created a cute little picket fence meet and greet area. We repainted the front doors of an animal shelter, a city run shelter. We did it! People were walking in the doors, seeing those happy animals, and being able to sit and meet their new dog in that area, and feel much more welcomed and positive about the experience.
Stacey Axelrod: Sarah's renovation of the shelter lobby was a pretty revolutionary move back in 2010. But unfortunately, there are some parts of our gruesome history that require more than a fresh coat of paint to overcome. Let's jump back into our history lesson with Kristen...
In the 1970s, we see spay and neuter come on the scene, which was a, an early attempt at a proactive service, which we had not seen much of. But, um, it was a pretty sad scene for animals. An estimated 20 million companion animals were being killed in shelters in the United States annually.
And the idea back then was that pet overpopulation, which we know now is a myth, made it impossible to ever do anything but euthanize animals. And this was a very, very common idea. Luckily one that has changed significantly.
Stacey Axelrod: When Kristen says that pet overpopulation is a myth, she's referring to the commonly-held belief that the United States has too many homeless pets and not enough people looking to house those pets. I actually reached out to Kristen for a little clarification and here's what she said via email.
"We know now that the issue is about regional supply and demand, not about an overall overpopulation issue. There are too many animals in some places and not enough in others." Thanks, Kristen!
So even though pet overpopulation may be an issue at one shelter... or within one community, or one state, or one region of the country... that issue just doesn't hold up at the national level.
In today's modern system of animal welfare, shelters and rescues all across the country are able to connect instantly and share data openly. They're working together, along with a vast web of transport volunteers and supporters, to solve that issue of regional supply and demand.
Kristen Hassen: And we now know that the demand for animals exceeds the available supply of animals. But back then, we didn't know that. And as we try to re-imagine a lot of our institutions and we rethink how we serve vulnerable people in our communities, we also need to fundamentally rethink animal services. Because what we've been doing is no longer appropriate for the world we live in today. And there are shelters that have known this for a very long time. It's where we see community outreach and foster care programs and pet retention programs come in.
Stacey Axelrod: Fostering is one of those fundamental changes that Kristen is talking about. It has revolutionized the way we care for animals. Our next guest, Kelly Duer, got swept up into that foster revolution shortly after she and her daughter Annie started volunteering at their local animal shelter in 2013.
Kelly Duer: So, we started volunteering at the shelter. We started falling in love with some of the dogs that we were walking during our shifts. And I had thought about fostering, but at the time, the shelter had whole bunch of hoops that you had to jump through to be able to become a foster. We had already gotten background checks and done the orientation for volunteering, but if you wanted to become a foster for the animals that you've been walking in the shelter, you had to go through another background check. And then, also you needed to... I believe you needed a home visit? You needed to go through extra training...
Stacey Axelrod: Unnecessary barriers like the ones Kelly encountered were not uncommon in the nineties and two thousands. And unfortunately, they're still very much a part of animal rescue today. At Kelly's shelter, it took a bold new change in leadership to start breaking down those barriers.
Kelly Duer: Right from the get-go, they started making massive changes that ultimately brought the shelter up to above a 90% save rate, from about 75%. They made changes that were completely outside the box. Like, a few months after we started volunteering, they made all volunteers into fosters automatically. So we didn't have to do anything extra. It was huge!
And they started a short-term foster program. Weekend foster. So you would go on a Saturday afternoon when the shelter was about to close, pick up your dog and then bring it back on Tuesday morning before the shelter opened again. And we were like, well, you know what, short-term foster, we can do anything.
Stacey Axelrod: Did you catch that? Short Term Foster. This is another very hot topic in the animal rescue world right now. It varies from organization to organization, but it generally includes day trips, field trips, overnights, and weekend foster options.
Here in New York City, you can sign up for a coveted spot on the BoroughBreak schedule. That's when Animal Care Centers pairs you with a shelter dog for a field trip. Outings can last for one hour up to a whole day. And there is no training, orientation, or prior experience required.
But back when Kelly started volunteering, short-term foster was still a brand new idea in animal rescue. Many people, myself included, were quick to overlook the benefits of giving dogs a break from the shelter and bringing them out into the community... even if it's just for a few hours walking around a beautiful park or for a sleepover in a quiet, comfortable home.
Stacey Axelrod: Kelly told me about her very first foster dog, the one who showed her the magic of Short Term Fostering. It was right after her daughter Annie had started interning at the shelter.
Kelly Duer: So she was sitting around with some of the staff and other interns, and they were talking about a dog named Mocha... who was a Brindle Pit Bull type dog, she'd been there for about six months. And she did fine in the beginning, but after like four months or so, her mental health started to decline. And she was super active in the kennel and difficult to walk.
And so they were sitting there talking about this dog. And one of them said 'Mocha is really a pain in the butt to walk. I think it's her time.' And so they kind of went around in a circle and said, 'yep, it's Mocha's time. She can't handle it anymore.'
And they got to Annie, and she said, 'well my mom likes Mocha!' And they said, 'well, your mom should take her home and foster her then.' And she told me this and I was like 'challenge accepted!'
Stacey Axelrod: Luckily for Kelly, Annie and Mocha, that very weekend was the start of the shelter's new short term foster program. On Saturday afternoon, Kelly picked up Mocha at the shelter and took her to a home for the first time in six months.
Kelly Duer: I had no idea what to expect. We took her home, I walked the heck out of her. And lo and behold, she was a normal dog and it was awesome! We got some great pictures of her in the home, we learned a ton about her.
Stacey Axelrod: Kelly and Annie knew that Mocha loved her toys at the shelter, so they decided to take her on a special shopping trip. But they had a feeling that Mocha would have trouble resisting all the new toys and treats that could be hers and hers alone.
Kelly Duer: She was a dog who, in the shelter, wouldn't give you back toys, And so we were like, what can we do to, like, keep her from stealing things from Petco? And I finally just picked her up and put her in the cart. And I was walking with her and Annie took our picture. And we sent it to the shelter and they posted it on Facebook, and it was one of the most popular posts that they'd ever done at that point. And, and it was, a completely different dog in the picture than anyone had ever seen in the shelter.
It was amazing! We brought her back on Tuesday morning. She was adopted by Thursday.
Stacey Axelrod: After such an incredible success with Mocha, Kelly and Annie continued short-term fostering.
Kelly Duer: We started having this crazy luck. I was like, maybe we have like some kind of magic. We would take these dogs home for the weekend, we would take pictures, we would get to know them. The shelter would post the pictures on Facebook and tell a story about how the dog did in weekend foster. And then these dogs, all of whom were facing euthanasia due to behavioral decline from stress, would get adopted within days of coming back to the shelter. It was the most amazing thing! And after about the fourth or fifth time, it occurred to me that it was not magic at all. It was Short Term Foster.
Kristen and Kelly team up on short term/behavioral foster study, 2015 (Kelly)
Stacey Axelrod: The magic of short-term fostering wouldn't have been possible at Kelly's shelter without the new leadership that came in and completely revolutionized their policies. One of those new leaders, as it turns out, was none other than Kristen Hassen. The two eventually partnered to change the entire animal rescue system on a national scale.
Kelly Duer: In 2015, Kristen decided to turn the foster program into a study. So the foster study was 52 dogs, all of whom were at risk for euthanasia due to their behavior in the shelter. Most of it was due to kennel stress. Some were just super scared and difficult to evaluate in a shelter. They were all dogs that would have been euthanized. There was really no other option. Foster wasn't widely used and when a dog or cat started to become stressed and their behavior started to decline, there was no way to stop it.
And what Kristen started doing was sending them to foster. And so she said, okay, tell me which dogs have we put into behavioral foster? So we're, you know, listing all the dogs, listing all the dogs and, and I, I thought, if we realize that the shelter was able to save 40% of these dogs... who 100% would have died before behavioral foster... it will be the most amazing thing.
And we looked at the list and she's like, there's only five dogs on this list that ended up getting euthanized. She was like, you've got to find more, this data can't be right! Um, But it was. So 90% of the dogs that went to behavioral foster were able to get adopted and they lived, which was absolutely groundbreaking.
Stacey Axelrod: If that was groundbreaking, then what came next was absolutely earth-shattering. Kristen's foster study at Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Virginia ultimately led to the massive, out-of-the-box changes that made it easier for volunteers like Kelly to start fostering. And after seeing such promising results with those 52 dogs in the behavioral foster study, Kristen and Kelly started attracting some national attention...
Kelly Duer: Maddie's Fund has a special interest in fostering. One of their strategic goals was to, you know, help organizations develop their foster programs. So they got in touch with Kristen and they said, would you like to do a larger study? We'll fund it. Seven shelters across the U.S., we would put 30 dogs into foster and then 30 who stayed in the shelter would be the controls.
And we found that on 21 measures of behavior, pets in foster improved on 17 of them by going into foster homes. So they were less insecure, less anxious. They were doing less barking. They were doing less repetitive behavior. They were happier, more confident. The well-being of these dogs increased significantly when they went to foster homes.
The dogs in the shelter, their behavior did not improve on any scales. And in fact, I believe there was one area where they decreased, which was friendliness to other dogs. And it hit me that the situation that the shelter put them in, they weren't dangerous dogs, but the situation that we were putting them in was ruining their well being and it was preventable.
Stacey Axelrod: Thanks to the work of animal welfare advocates in the last 10 years or so, shelters are completely different places than they used to be. Kristen and Kelly's groundbreaking research proved to the entire animal rescue community that fostering is the future.
Sarah Brasky: What I learned from the study that Kristen and Kelly had done is that short-term fostering works and makes a difference. They were able to prove that the cortisol levels of the dogs that went back to the shelter after being in short-term foster care were no higher than dogs who'd been at the shelter the whole time. It does not cause increased stress on dogs to go in and out of foster homes. Yes, they will still be sad to be in a shelter, but it does not leave an impact on them and they are not worse for the wear by being in short-term foster care, even if it was two days and someone can't commit to this long-term experience.
This was very effective with a lot of city shelters who were skeptical about starting a foster program. The benefits are infinite and the downside is... okay, the dog might have to go back to the shelter in a couple of days, but now you've got all that material to share with the public. And if you don't adopt that dog, somebody will see your pictures, or will see on your Instagram or Facebook, all those cool notes about the dog. And maybe your next door neighbor will say, Hey, I had no idea that that's a great dog, I want him, I'm going to go adopt him tomorrow.
Stacey Axelrod: In 2018, shortly after the nationwide foster study was completed, Sarah was selected to attend a Maddie's Fund Foster Apprenticeship. She and a group of rescuers from around the country spent four days at Pima Animal Care Center where they received hands-on training that they could bring back to their home communities. The lessons covered topics like creating a foster-centric culture in your community, recruitment and retention of foster families, marketing foster pets, and building short-term foster programs tailored to your shelter's population and needs. And you'll never guess who was leading that apprenticeship...
Sarah Brasky: So this experience in Arizona introduced me to Kristen and Kelly, introduced me to what a state-of-the-art shelter looked like, what state-of-the-art foster care looked like. And my whole outlook was... not necessarily changed because I was in alignment with their values, but I now felt equipped to talk more directly about the need for foster care, to give more evidence-based responses to Why We Foster.
And it was, it was a really life-changing experience. Not to be dramatic, but I have to say, if I didn't go on that apprenticeship with Maddie's Fund, I don't think Foster Dogs would have been as productive in our mission over these last few years.
Stacey Axelrod: I remember when Sarah returned from that apprenticeship and shared all that knowledge with the Foster Dogs volunteer team. That's when we started focusing more on education and outreach, especially online and in underserved communities. As our programs, events, donor base, and volunteer team all expanded beyond the New York City area, so too did the Foster Dogs mission.
Sarah Brasky: We adjusted to be more national several years ago when it was very apparent that we had a very strong rescue scene in New York City. And there were so many other areas of the country that needed more foster support.
So we increased a lot of our social media reach around the country. We ran a senior dog foster and adoption event with Susie's Senior Dogs to help promote fostering with nine different shelters and rescue groups in the LA area.
We expanded to the Nashville Metro Animal Care and Control. We were hands on, very tangibly, helping improve a foster program at a city shelter that did not have a robust foster program before our involvement. So now they have built out their Bow Wow Breakout short-term foster program. They've expanded to have all these incredible long-term foster care programs. They've expanded their inclusivity.
And everything was in the mindset of how can we make this more accessible, take away barriers to fostering, keep it safe for the dogs and humans, make it a positive experience for everybody. And that is what makes all the difference in getting people's foot in the door.
We like to use the phrase, Building a Foster Community, and that knows no borders. It doesn't matter if you are on the east coast, west coast, in Japan, in Hawaii, wherever. Dogs are dogs! And there's so many opportunities to connect with people around the country. Fostering is universal. Fostering is not specific to one city. It is something that anyone anywhere in the world can get involved with.
Stacey Axelrod: When you consider the 200-year history of sheltering and the historically slow pace of change, fostering has been one of the most revolutionary things to ever happen in animal welfare. And it was barely even an option less than a decade ago.
Over the last few years, leaders in animal rescue have been working nonstop to see widespread implementation of fostering. But when the COVID 19 pandemic broke out in 2020, it forced everything into overdrive, literally changing the movement overnight.
Sarah Brasky: The start of COVID, the start of quarantine, was a hit the ground running moment. And our applications on a daily basis for fostering went from four or five a day to about a hundred a day in March of 2020. So the increase was insane, unfathomable, and the demand outweighed the supply after a few weeks.
There were many shelters who had to immediately adjust their way of placing animals in homes, adjust their applications, their entire processes. There was a lot of mindset shifting that had to happen, because what's your goal here? Is it that the dog lives in the best house in the neighborhood with the nicest yard and somebody who's home 24/7? Or is your goal that the dog is safe and healthy and happy and out of the shelter? Because if it's the latter, you're going to adjust your policies and make it more accessible for people who previously might not have been approved to foster with your organization. And so COVID forced so many shelters and rescue groups to adjust their ways, be more open-minded and allow for fostering or adoption to be the most important thing, rather than policies.
And there are many organizations that prefer to stay stuck, that prefer not to be part of the national progressive movement. But it's going to hinder their ability to expand their rescue efforts if they are not seeking out ways to improve. I don't think that there's any perfect organization out there... but striving to improve, striving to be part of the national conversation.... that's really the best that you can be doing.
Stacey Axelrod: The national conversation that Sarah is referring to is one of the really great things to come out of the pandemic.
Sarah Brasky: It all started with these weekly meetings. Maddie's Fund, American Pets Alive, they had weekly check-ins with rescuers to talk about COVID and to say what's happening in animal welfare, where are our efforts most needed? And HASS was developed, there were people all around the country, shelter admins and volunteers, working together to gather data, to share what's working and what's not working. And that is making a lasting impact. That might not have happened without the intensity of COVID.
Stacey Axelrod: One of the people leading those national conversations about animal welfare is Kristen.
Kristen Hassen: HASS is really just a movement of organizations and individuals who say it's time for a massive change. It's not the time for incremental tiny changes to animal welfare. We need to fundamentally change most of how we operate. And I think that animal welfare was already starting to come together to say, why don't we think about changing the system because it's not really working anymore.
And then when COVID struck, it was a push, it was a kick in the pants for all of us that if we didn't work together, we could see mass euthanasia. We could see animals getting stuck in shelters for months to years on end. And so, we all had to come together out of necessity, but through that, we all learned to work together. And now, I think what's really exceptional about this moment is that everyone is working together and we're all working towards pretty much the same goals.
Stacey Axelrod: So that brings us to today. It's the summer of 2021 and as we cautiously emerge from the pandemic, the animal welfare industry is finally emerging from that gruesome history based in the mid-1800s. Leaders and organizations from all across the country are collaborating to not just fundamentally change the system, but also to determine the role that animal shelters and services should play in the future.
Kristen Hassen: Just like with every sector in every industry, animal welfare needs to pivot, or it's not going to survive, we're not going to get better unless we're willing to embrace this new world and change how we do business. So we're pretty committed to leading the charge on that. Part of my role is to help other people be brave and to take chances and to push the needle because doing it the way we've always done it is not going to work anymore, not for the world we live in today.
We've got to stop putting all these barriers in place against people who want to help. Our biggest problem with fostering is we're making it too hard for people. People should be able to email you, say I'd like to foster a pet, and go home with a pet that same day. People do not want to wait weeks to help you with something. When they can get their Amazon delivery 10 times faster than they can get a pet to help, that is a problem. We don't live in a culture that is going to go through four training sessions and a home visit, all to foster. And so as long as we're requiring those things, when good people want to help us, we are missing out on most of the people who would be willing to help.
Stacey Axelrod: But once we lower the barriers and make fostering more accessible, what if there aren't enough people who are willing and able to foster all those homeless pets?
Kristen Hassen: There's more than enough... there's more than enough fosters for every animal in the country. We just need to start asking people. We could solve this problem tomorrow. We could solve the problem of animals living in shelter tomorrow, but we are going to have to get a lot better at asking for help and making it easy for people to help. And we're still not very good at that as a movement. We need to grow the number of people helping us because they're there, they want to help, and they're just waiting for us to ask.
Stacey Axelrod: So do you want to help? Please consider this your official invitation to get involved. You might be surprised how quick and easy it is to start fostering with your local shelter or rescue group. And if it isn't that easy or you can't find a foster program nearby, perhaps this is your chance to be a brave new leader in your community.
Kristen Hassen: This next decade is going to be full of challenges and I hope people who are listening to this podcast really aren't afraid to be brave. Because we all need to be very brave and very bold over the next few years to change animal welfare. We're on the cusp of doing it, but it's going to take all of us working together and supporting each other
Stacey Axelrod: Thanks so much for tuning in to Why We Foster. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe now. If you really enjoyed the show and you want to show some love to our volunteer production team, we would appreciate your support with a rating or review on your podcast app of choice! Why We Foster is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you know someone who might enjoy the show, please share it with them and help them subscribe! You can also follow us on Instagram at @WhyWeFoster and visit WhyWeFoster.com for more info about the show.
Why We Foster is produced by me along with Foster Dogs Incorporated, the leading organization in creating positive, inclusive foster communities by providing support, experience, and innovative programs. You can follow Foster Dogs on Instagram at @FosterDogs and please consider supporting this incredible non-profit in whatever way you can at FosterDogsNYC.com.
Our incredible production team is Kate Trahan, Lauren Cattan, Daniela Escobar Blaines, and Sarah Brasky. Audio mixing and mastering by Jack Braglia. You can find me at petphotographer.nyc or on Instagram at @NYCPetPhotographer. I'm Stacey Axelrod and this is Why We Foster. Farewell for now, Foster Friends!
