You Can Build a Bridge to a Better Life for Dogs
Pat Miller’s How to Foster Dogs is the first book on the market to deal specifically with the care and training needs of foster dogs and how the fostering process works when done through a formal arrangement with an organization like a shelter or breed rescue group. Fostering dogs involves caring on a temporary basis for puppies and dogs who for whatever reason cannot be housed with their owners, shelters or breed rescue organizations. Many shelters now have formal fostering programs for dogs who are too young, unhealthy or have behavioral issues and therefore have to be housed with a foster family or face euthanasia. The book also covers informal fostering situations when families move or have some disruption and a friend or relative agrees to care for the dog temporarily.

You will learn
• About the various organizations that seek the services of foster families for dogs.
• What a typical formal arrangement between a shelter and a foster parent involves including expectations of care and training, and the support you can expect from the shelter including covering expenses and other legal issues.
• About the most common behavioral issues facing foster dogs and puppies including fear and separation anxiety, a likely undeserved reputation for what may have been perceived as “dominance,” and irritating but usually solvable problems such as house soiling, chewing and barking.
• How to successfully integrate a foster dog into your home if you own other dogs.
• While it is possible that you will end up adopting the dog yourself, learn how to prepare to say goodbye to your foster best friend knowing that you have done your best to build a bridge to a better future for him or her.

What experts are saying about How to Foster Dogs
Opening your heart to a foster dog is easy; opening your home is much more challenging. In How to Foster Dogs—From Homeless to Homeward Bound, Pat Miller shares her secrets for success. She covers it all, from training techniques to management tips to support when it’s time to say goodbye. It’s like having a good friend in your corner providing help and guidance along the way.
Colleen Pelar, author Living with Kids and Dogs

Where has this book been? Pat Miller’s How to Foster Dogs is an important book that should be on the shelf of every trainer, shelter and rescue organization in the country. This clear and thoughtful book will do a lot to help dogs find their forever homes. Here here Pat!
Patricia McConnell, PhD, author, Love Has No Age Limit: Welcoming an Adopted Dog into Your Home

This clearly written, comprehensive guide covers everything from how to find a shelter or rescue to partner with, to how to decide which dogs you can take on, to the heartachy joy of saying goodbye at adoption. Of course, all that is just what I'd expect, given Pat's decades of experience in sheltering and rescue.
Jolanta Benal, CPDT-KA, CBCC-KA Author of The Dog Trainer's Complete Guide to a Happy, Well-Behaved Pet and host of "The Dog Trainer's Quick and Dirty Tips for Teaching and Caring for Your Pet"

Pat Miller does an excellent, comprehensive job of teaching readers how to go about fostering intelligently and successfully. Invaluable information and support is plentiful on every step of the journey, beginning with finding a foster dog, making preparations and conducting introductions, through training and socialization and, finally, the adoption process. How to Foster Dogs is a vital resource that should be required reading for every foster home!
Nicole Wilde, author Help for Your Fearful Dog and Don’t Leave Me! Step by Step Help for Your Dog’s Separation Anxiety

It is a realistic but enthusiastic and informative look at fostering dogs, a truly lifesaving and rewarding strategy to help shelters reduce euthanasia of healthy and treatable pets. The materials are comprehensive with helpful citations for the behavior/training information and health information. I especially appreciated the discussion of all the different types of animal welfare groups that use fostering and Pat is smart to recommend doing a little research on any group foster volunteers’ endeavor to help – you just never know until you see it firsthand.
Sharon M. Harmon, CAWA

More people than ever are interested in fostering dogs however this romantic notion may be a disaster without the right tools, which is what a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant provides. Miller’s tips will help you to integrate the Foster pup into your family from day one, and without that often talked about need to dominate the dog – as she effectively busts the so-called dominance theory. Miller does address what to do regarding training and several common behavioral issues.
Steve Dale, CABC, radio host (Steve Dale’s Pet World, syndicated Black Dog Radio Productions and WGN Radio); newspaper column “My Pet World” (Tribune Content Agency); contributing editor USA Weekend; contributor to "Decoding Your Dog"

Pat Miller is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant, dog trainer and author of six books on dog training and behavior including Play With Your Dog, and Do-Over Dogs. She offers training and behavior services, conducts academies for trainers at her Peaceable Paws training facility in Fairplay, Maryland, and presents seminars worldwide.

Click here to view an excerpt.



What reviewers are saying...

As a behavior director for a large shelter which does its very best to save every adoptable animal that walks through our doors, I am acutely aware of how critical well-developed foster programs are to saving the lives of homeless animals in need. In typical Pat Miller fashion, she addresses the subject of fostering with the perfect blend of humor, compassion, and experience in her new book, How to Foster Dogs: From Homeless to Homeward Bound. As fostering gains a foothold within the rescue and sheltering communities, the need for such a book is becoming increasingly self-evident to those of us who arrange for the pairing of foster dogs and foster families. Because animal welfare can be an emotionally challenging endeavor for even the most committed of volunteers or staff, it was refreshing to read through this book and find myself laughing out loud. Not only does Pat provide practical advice for how foster families can work with their foster dogs to enhance their adoptability, she also addresses the emotional needs of these foster families to help avoid compassion fatigue. Thank you Pat and Dogwise for this valuable resource, one that I will certainly be recommending as required reading for all of our fantastic foster families here at the shelter!
Casey Lomonaco, Director of Volunteer and Behavior Programs at SPCA of Tompkins County