Spring break plans? How about an adventure buddy?
Spring break is one of those phrases that mean totally different things depending on where you are in life. If you’re a college student, maybe it looks like piling into a car with your friends, flying home to see family, or finally catching up on sleep and laundry. If you’re a parent, it probably looks like two simple words: no school! Routines get tossed in the air, the house gets more animated, and suddenly you’re responsible for entertainment, snacks, and screen time negotiations between Teams meetings.
For others, spring break barely even registers, if it does at all. Maybe you notice the roads are busier and the cereal aisle is a little more chaotic. I always notice a sudden influx of younger guests in the lunch line at Angel Village. But everyday life mostly carries on.
However it shows up, spring break usually comes with one precious ingredient: time that looks a little different than usual. So here’s my pitch. While you’re breaking up your routine, give a homeless pet a spring break, too.
I’m talking about fostering — that beautiful experience where a pet from a shelter or rescue group comes to crash with you for a short stay — perhaps a week, a long weekend, or whatever window of time you have. For college students or teachers fostering over spring break, it might mean a few days of dog walks, puppaccinos, and couch hangs. For families, it could mean letting your kids help care for a pet who really needs it with a clear end date when school starts again. Or for the people with PTO who are taking their own spring reset, it might mean a week of rest and decompression alongside a four-legged friend in need of the exact same thing.
There’s something incredibly sweet about watching a pet realize they’ve landed somewhere safe and comfortable, even when it’s temporary. There’s a moment when they begin to decompress, and you can see all their worries melt away with the comfort of home. You get to see who they really are when the shelter environment is replaced with Netflix binges, walks through the neighborhood, and TLC that helps their personality shine. And those insights are so, so helpful. The more a shelter knows about how a pet behaves in a home, the better they can match them with an adopter.
No need to feel intimidated if you’ve never fostered before. Advice and backup throughout your foster journey are just a phone call or text message away. People also often wonder whether they’ll get too attached, and of course, we all get attached. But there’s a beautiful sentiment I recall whenever it’s especially tough to say goodbye to a foster pet: By fostering, you are providing a bridge to that pet’s adoptive home. Opportunity windows like spring break give folks a chance to see what fostering is like while having a built-in exit ramp. And if, when spring break is winding down, you find yourself thinking, “Honestly, that wasn’t so hard,” you’ve just unlocked a whole new way you can help beyond this one week.
If an overnight foster experience isn’t in the cards right now, you can still give a dog a little vacation from the shelter. At Best Friends, our pet adoption centers in New York City and Los Angeles have an adventure buddy program made for people who want to help but can’t bring a pet home full time. You sign up, we pair you with one of our dogs, and you head out together for the day. The dogs get a break from the kennel and some real-world experience. You get a furry sidekick and a very good story to tell (and the knowledge that you helped a very deserving dog, of course).
Programs like adventure buddy (which you might have seen on social media via Bryan Reisberg’s viral outings carrying adoptable dogs in his backpack), along with foster programs at shelters and rescue groups all over the country, create breathing room inside the shelter and give pets healthy, enriching experiences while they wait for homes of their own. Just as important, they engage community members in the work in a joyful, hands-on way. And if you want to give social media a try, your foster video could be next to go viral. Who knows, it might even be your calling.
So wherever you land on the spring break spectrum — whether you’re a college student, a tired parent, or the cool aunt with a guest room — I hope you’ll think about using a bit of that time to give a pet their own little vacation. Foster for the week. Take a dog out for the day. Talk to your local shelter or rescue group about what they need most right now.
If you’re not sure where to start, here’s a good place. Simply plug in your location to find shelters and rescue groups near you and explore their foster opportunities. You might learn that your schedule works perfectly for bottle-feeding kittens or that you can finish those chores faster when you know there's a friend waiting to cuddle you on the couch. Or maybe you just learn that there's a little more room in your heart –– and your home –– to help care for a pet who needs it most.
Spring break might not come with neon clothes and beach music mixes anymore, but it can still be a reset. And if, in the middle of that, a homeless pet gets to nap on your couch and be part of your family for a little while? Sounds like a pretty great reset to me.
-Julie
