I’m Cassie. I am an insurance agent, and a youth leader at my church. I have four dogs, Loki and Jackson came from my local spca, Ava came from the litter that got me into fostering, and Bindi is my foster failure.
I also have three cats, I rescued Harper out of a barn at 4 weeks old, Evan I got from a friend of a friend who was rehoming him, and Vader I adopted from the Appomattox shelter when I was doing a freedom ride for a dog.
I started volunteering while I was in college walking dogs at the local shelter. I fell in love with the idea of fostering. I’d always brought home strays, which is how my parents ended up with a dozen cats. So I always intended to foster once I got my life together and got a big enough house, but when my neighbor moved away and left a litter of puppies, I called on the humane society and the rest is history I guess.
I love fostering because it makes a difference. I want to bring every dog home with me from the local shelter, but I just can’t do that. There aren’t enough square feet in my house, but by fostering I have been able to save and rehome 13 dogs! That’s just amazing to me.
I think part of why I find fostering easy, is because nothing can compare to the animals I have chosen for myself. I got Loki (a Belgian Malinois/Husky mix) when he was four months old. He is affectionately called the termite. In his puppyhood, he ate several porch railings, part of the stairs, a rocking chair, a whole couch (no exaggeration, the whole dang couch), several hoses, every welcome mat, a workout bench, part of the actual porch, most of my mom’s flower pots, and my front porch swing. Actually that is a very conservative estimate, I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting half of what he destroyed, and don’t get me started on my cat Evan who keeps eating my loaves of bread and any other food stuff stored in anything less than steel. He is unstoppable!
Bindi would have to be my favorite foster dog, because I couldn’t let her leave. She went from the most spastic and ridiculous dog on speed to a gentle and loving little girl that my dad keeps threatening to steal from me.
I love to foster dogs that have just gotten out of that cute puppy stage but aren’t yet grown. They get overlooked a lot because they show bad in shelter environment. They tend to freak out, but if you let them run the energy off then you’ve got a dog that is old enough to work with. A teenage dog has all the potential in the world and most desperately needs a second chance.
