Hello and thank you for your interest in fostering a greyhound with us!
Our greyhounds are very fortunate to be cared for in loving foster homes while they are getting ready for their forever families. Foster families are integral to our adoption process by providing personality assessments, teaching basic house manners, and ensuring our hounds are well cared for physically and mentally.
To provide the best care for, and to give each of our hounds the best chance at a successful adoption, our greyhounds are in foster homes until chosen for adoption. For this reason, our hounds need foster homes that are committed to their care & training until they are adopted. Foster time periods vary for each greyhound, so we rarely seek temporary foster placements that simply want to have a hound "visit" their home for a short peroid of time. Remember- you are volunteering to help your foster dog be better prepared for family life after track life. They need stability and routine, just as they've had in their past lives and as we seek for them in forever homes. Bouncing them around from foster home to foster home is not conducive to successfully placing them in adoptive homes.
Some of the skills they should learn while in your foster care are, but not limited to the following:
* House training/Potty training
* Crate training (learning to accept reasonable amounts of time in his/her crate)
* Leash walking skills
* Acceptance of routine grooming & bathing
* Conditioning to normal household noises & family routines
* Confidence in going up and down stairs
* Polite social skills with other animals, as appropriate for the individual hound
* Ability to load in a vehicle and transport without stress
If these are things your family is willing and interested in doing, please submit our online FOSTER APPLICATION and we will be in contact with you within 2-3 days to discuss a good foster match for your home. Even if we do not currently have a good match, we are continuously bringing in new dogs and looking for foster homes for each new group.
*IMPORTANT NOTICE* Due to the shortage of greyhounds that are available to adoption groups, 4GR has a "foster fail" policy in place for several reasons. We require that foster families complete at least one full foster cycle prior to adopting. In other words, volunteering to foster dog WILL NOT put you ahead on the adoption list. If a foster family has previously completed a foster cycle they will be eligible to foster fail only if their dog is not chosen at any upcoming appointments that were scheduled prior to the foster familiy indicating they have interest in adopting the dog in their home.
Thank you from the greyhounds and all of us at 4 GREYHOUND RACERS