City of Bloomington Animal Care and Control: Dog Field Trip/Short-Term Fostering Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

Supplies to support our Slumber Buddies program and its launch

It allowed us to provide a standard experience and allocate staff time to the program, making it successful.

How many pets did this grant help?

22 so far

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

The Slumber Buddies program came about at the beginning of 2020. We had enormous community interest and were able to get to know the animals in our program a little better through short-term fostering, and could find them better adoptive matches because of it. Echo is a 2-year-old Lab mix who came to the shelter very under-socialized. She was fearful in the kennel and we did not know much about her personality. She was sent into a short-term foster with a wonderful young lady who was unable to adopt or foster long-term, but loves dogs. We learned a lot of cute facts about Echo in the foster home that helped her connect to her adoptive family. We learned her favorite treats, that she loved to cuddle up in bed, and that she was a super quick learner of tricks! Echo gained confidence and was able to hold on to that when she came back to the shelter, where the kennel wasn’t so scary any more. Echo was adopted and has been happily loving her new family for more than three months now.