Simon

Fosterer and Transporter

We were introduced to IRR and the wonderful world of fostering by my sister, Jane. After some thought we decided we’d give it a try ourselves, since then we’ve never looked back, as they say. It’s been and continues to be a wonderful and rewarding experience with each dog we foster and so far we haven’t had a bad one!

Each and every dog is welcomed into our busy home and soon becomes part of the family. Our family consists of myself, Julie and our three children, Chris (12), Emily (10), Thomas (2), Candy our Shih Tzu and our two chinchilla’s, Chip and Pin. As you can guess every dog we foster gets a thorough family test, so far every one of them has coped admirably with the frantic lifestyle that comes with having three active children.

We’ve had no formal animal training and besides donating to various animal charities over the years we’ve not been actively involved in any other animal welfare organisations but Julie and myself have been around dogs all our lives. Therefore, what we bring to each of our foster dogs is practical experience and we treat each dog as if they were our own and not just a temporary guest.

Also, when writing our assessment of each dog we are totally honest and will highlight the bad points so that any prospective owner knows exactly what they are taking on. Fortunately, and I think this must be down to the breed we have yet to come across a bad golden retriever, even the ones that have been abused or neglected.

We thoroughly enjoy fostering dogs and find it a very rewarding experience and what we never realised was the additional reward when we receive feedback from the dog’s forever home. It’s not been without it’s down’s especially when we had to have Toby, one of our foster dogs put to sleep but on the whole it’s been a wonderful experience.

We thank all our friends in IRR for allowing us this wonderful opportunity and I would wholly recommend dog fostering to anyone who has a soft spot for dogs.