OUR FOSTER PROGRAM
We are not a shelter or public facility, with regular business hours, where potential adopters can drop in at any time and go home with a dog of their choice. All of our animals are fostered in private homes, or at Cavorting K9s Retreat, which allows us to better assess their temperament and behaviour, and understand the type of family that will best suit their needs.
We are a firm believer that it takes at least a month for the dog to learn the new home routine & get comfortable enough to be themselves. If, at any time during the 30 day trial period, it is determined that the dog is not a good fit to your family and lifestyle, the dog must be returned to AB Herding Dog Rescue. At that point, we will revisit any other applications received for that dog.
Please note that many of these herding breeds are transferred or surrendered to us because they exhibit:
- excessive herding/chasing/nipping behaviours that many pet owners do not know how to deal with
- no herding behaviours that the stockmen & ranchers are looking for or
- very high intensity & drive that require an appropriate outlet, such as dog sports
- fear reactivity to various triggers that will take time & patience & training to deal with.
We rarely get a "couch potato" that is happy to just sit in the yard and watch the world go by. It is even rarer that we get puppies less than a year old or well-trained stock dogs.
It is more likely that we will get a dog that was found as a stray, was chasing livestock and in danger of being shot or would shut down when worked on livestock, was nipping the kids or smaller animals or chasing bicyclists/cars, is somewhat fearful of specific types of people, barked excessively or has resource guarding or separation or isolation anxiety issues or some other obsessive behaviour often left to manifest into a bigger problem that owners had difficulty dealing with.
So before you fill out an adoption application, please be sure you are willing to work with the dog's known issues - those that are described in their history as well as any issues observed while in foster care.
To preview our adoption agreement, which outlines our expectations of adopters, please click on the button below.
IMPORTANT NOTE!
During this Covid damndemic, we have had more applications come in than we have dogs available. To that end, we have numerous applications that have been approved & are just waiting for the right dog to come into rescue. Priority will be given to those approved applications before new applications (for the same dog) will be considered.
If you would like more information about a particular dog, or you would like to fill out an application & get the process started, please email us by clicking on this link: