Fostering saves lives: Be a hero to a homeless pet

When you provide a foster home to an animal from Best Friends or a local shelter, you become part of a lifesaving team working to create a bright, healthy, and safe future for homeless dogs and cats around the country.

A shelter can be a noisy and stressful place, especially for shy and frightened animals. By providing a loving, quiet place for pets to learn and grow, you’re helping to alleviate the burden for a local shelter.

When you foster a pet, you’re helping to save even more lives by freeing up space in shelters for additional animals. So what are you waiting for? Snuggles, silliness, fun, and friendship await!

Foster with Best Friends

Best Friends is partnering with these communities throughout the country to help save their homeless pets, and you can be a part of that lifesaving when you raise your hand to foster:

No-Kill Los Angeles (NKLA) • No-Kill Utah (NKUT) • Navajo Nation

Foster for a shelter or rescue group near you

Shelters and rescue groups in your community need caring people like you to foster, volunteer, adopt, donate, and advocate to help save the lives of pets. When you give us your email address, we'll send you a list of shelters where you live and share more about how you can help save the lives of homeless pets.

Find an animal shelter or rescue group near you today:

Smiling person relaxing on a bed with a cat

New to fostering?

Foster kittens are a great way to get started. Give us your email, and we’ll get you everything you need to know.

Get Started With Fostering

Still have questions? More about fostering »

What to expect when you foster a pet

Fostering a pet is an easy, direct, and short-term way to make a lifetime of difference. It simply means temporarily opening your home to pets in need and giving them love and care while they wait to be adopted.

Foster Volunteer Tasks

Typical responsibilities in the day of a pet foster caregiver include feeding, caring for, and socializing the pet (or pets) you’re fostering.

Time Commitment

Fostering a pet is a flexible way to help make a difference in the lives of pets because you can foster a dog or cat for just a night or two — or for several weeks — depending on what works best for your lifestyle and schedule.

Volunteer Requirements

Best Friends (and some shelters) can provide everything you need, including food, supplies, support, and veterinary care; you’ll just need to provide the love.

Lifesaving tales of love and resilience

Meet a few of the amazing animals who've found healing and happiness because of caring foster volunteers.

More ways you can help the animals

As thousands of animals looking for families of their very own remain in shelters around the country, one of the most valuable gifts you can give them is your time.

Smiling person sitting on a couch with a cat next to them

Volunteer from home

From administrative and marketing roles to events and fostering, we have lifesaving volunteer opportunities suited for you and your interests.

See remote opportunities

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Volunteer at our animal sanctuary

Stroll with a dog, spruce up a rabbit run, or simply keep a shy cat company. There are plenty of ways to make a difference at our animal sanctuary.

See sanctuary opportunities

Person wearing Best Friends gear while hugging a dog

Volunteer in your community

There are countless opportunities to help save the lives of homeless pets, no matter where you live in the United States.

See opportunities near me

About Best Friends Animal Society

Best Friends is working to end the killing of dogs and cats in U.S. shelters in part by getting more pets out of shelters and into loving homes.

We’ve come a long way since the first known city reached no-kill in 1994, and now we’re closer than ever to making the entire country no-kill. Of the roughly 3,900 shelters operating in America today, 1,300 of them are not yet no-kill, but nearly half are close with 100 or fewer additional pets to be saved, and we know what to do to get them there.

Best Friends is committed to working with passionate people like you to save homeless pets through adoption, volunteering, fostering, and advocacy. In addition to our lifesaving centers around the U.S, we also founded and run the nation's largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals.

Working together, we can save homeless pets in our communities and secure a better future for our best friends. Together, we will bring the whole country to no-kill.