Pets can come as a great responsibility, but the Lee County Humane Society is taking a creative approach to the decision process of welcoming a furry friend into the family. The shelter has started a temporary form of adoption called the Weekend Warriors program.
Though the Humane Society’s usual trial time for deciding whether to own a pet is two weeks, the new initiative allows prospective pet owners to stop in on a Friday or Saturday to take on an animal for one or two nights and determine the feasibility of taking care of a dog, cat or other pet.
“A lot of other shelters do it, and they’ve seen really positive results,” said Bailey Ray, LCHS foster programs coordinator. “We’re actually trying to become part of a larger study with Maddie’s Fund to see if we can help them get more information on how our program is doing so they can make [it] even better.”
Maddie’s Fund is a nonprofit family foundation based in California. Its mission is to transform the U.S. into a “no-kill nation” through financial support toward small animal shelters, according to its website.
The funding is used for creating and sustaining life-saving programs such as Weekend Warriors.
LCHS has run the program for two weekends and feels it has already been successful in its endeavors to promote happier adoptions between both pet and owner.
Josh Mitchell, the shelter’s health coordinator, shared a testimony about Jake, a dog who was known to have behavioral troubles with other animals.
“He went to a foster home this weekend, and when he came back Monday, he was a completely different dog,” Mitchell said. “He was play-bowing and engaging with the other dogs, running around with some of the other dogs he didn’t have anything to do with the first time. It’s night and day with him the last two days.”
Before time in his foster care residence as part of Weekend Warriors, Jake wore a basket muzzle when being sent out to the Humane Society’s play area.
Mitchell feels that only one person giving the dog attention instead of several at the shelter allowed him to decompress and learn what life in a real home is like.
While the shelter has seen great results with the concept, LCHS Director T.J. McCullough said the shelter can’t take credit for the idea; other organizations on social media inspired LCHS to pursue the idea, such as Shelby Humane Society in Columbiana, Alabama.
“[It] was one of the ideas they had mentioned, so we did our own investigation and research to initiate this and get it going [to recruit more foster homes],” McCullough said.
After participation in the Weekend Warriors program, foster families can complete report cards that are placed in each animal’s file that indicate qualities like whether or not a pet is good with sharing toys.
After the weekend stay, LCHS will leave it up to them whether they’d like to make the animal a permanent addition to their home.
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