Become a Foster
We depend on our network of foster homes to help us care for animals who need a little extra attention.
Fast-track to fostering.
Fostering can be fun, rewarding, and incredibly heart-warming.
Apply
Welcome Packet
Once approved, our team will send you a Welcome Packet for you to review. You can watch our orientation while you wait if you want to get ahead!
Onboarding
Watch our Foster Orientation Presentation and take the short quiz afterward!
Foster Requirements
Help us save lives by providing a temporary, loving and restful retreat for animals in need. We provide all of the supplies, food and medical attention, so there is no cost to you as a foster parent… all you provide is love!
- At least 18 years old
- Have a reliable vehicle of your own
- Live within a 45 minute radius if fostering infant or fragile animals
- Live in Buncombe or an adjacent county for all other animals
Fostering FAQs
We do our best to make fostering as easy and accessible as possible! To get started, there are just a few requirements:
Foster parents must be 18 years or older.
You can live in Buncombe County or any adjacent county: Madison, Yancey, McDowell, Rutherford, Henderson, Transylvania, or Haywood.
Fosters must commit to bringing their foster pets to Asheville Humane Society every two weeks for routine appointments—or sooner if any urgent issues come up.
If you’re fostering neonates or medically fragile animals, you must live within 45 minutes of our campus.
It’s totally ok if you’re not home all day, many of our foster pets do great in homes where people work outside the home.
All foster parents must have reliable personal transportation (Uber, Lyft, and other ride-share services don’t meet this requirement).
Simply submit a foster interest form on this page, and, once approved, we will be in touch with you shortly to get the ball rolling! If you would like to do our online orientation while you’re waiting for your application to be approved, it can be found above.
Absolutely! We always recommend that foster pets be kept in a separate quarantine space—ideally a single room—when they first arrive in your home. This helps contain any potential illnesses they may be carrying, as some symptoms can take up to 14 days to appear. After those two weeks, we’ll do a thorough physical exam to determine if your foster is ready to come out of quarantine.
We also request and highly recommend any of your personal pets are up to date on their vaccines and heartworm/flea and tick preventatives before taking home a foster pet, even if your foster will be quarantined separately from them.
Please note that Asheville Humane Society is not licensed to diagnose or treat personal pets. However, we’ll always let you know at pickup if we have any concerns about your foster animal’s health so you can make informed decisions for your own pets.
Our foster program focuses on animals who are too young, sick, or are not quite behaviorally ready for adoption.
This includes, but is not limited to, puppies and kittens (with or without their mother), animals with skin/medical conditions, animals waiting for or recovering from medical procedures, and animals who need help building their confidence and/or proper manners around people.
Typically, healthy animals that are ready for adoption are not candidates for foster, but sometimes we have adult animals who need a vacation or a break from the shelter!
You can see animals in need of foster here:
https://www.ashevillehumane.org/get-involved/foster/fosterdaily/
Once your foster pet gets a clean bill of health from our medical team, they’ll be ready to return to the Adoption Center to find their forever home!
If your foster has already been spayed or neutered, we’ll bring them back as soon as we have space—sometimes even the same day.
If they still need to be spayed or neutered, we’ll schedule the surgery and have them return the night before. They’ll head to surgery the next morning and come back to AHS for adoption the day after.
Our foster team will always do their best to give you a heads-up so you know when to expect your foster to return.
We will provide all basic care supplies (like food, a carrier, leashes and harnesses for dogs, litter and litterboxes for cats, toys, etc) for your foster animal for its duration in foster care. We can even provide things like crates and playpens to help keep your foster pet contained to a smaller space in your home!
The only exception to this is that we do request our small animal fosters to provide the daily fresh vegetables their animal requires.
No – we actually require all medical care given to any foster animal to be administered by our medical team here on campus. We have two veterinary assistants who will make sure your foster pets get everything they need medically, and a full-time veterinarian as well that they work with!
You should never take your foster pet to your personal veterinarian for any reason.
If AHS determines that your foster animal requires a medical procedure to be done by an outside veterinarian, AHS will arrange this and cover these costs.
Foster opportunities vary! A lot of our animals spend 4-8 weeks in foster homes, and we often request a minimum commitment of two weeks, but there are opportunities for shorter-term fosters and vacations depending on the pet!
Sometimes! We will always discuss individual animals’ needs & behavior information with you prior to scheduling a pick-up appointment to ensure we’re doing all we can to make a good match.
If you are interested in fostering a dog and would like a dog meet between the potential foster & your resident dog or other human family members, we can almost always arrange for that to happen!
We can’t always do cat meet-and-greets before you take them home, but if our space and staffing availabilty allows, we’ll try to!
We can not facilitate dog-cat or cat-cat meetings.
That’s great! We always love hearing that a foster animal has a home waiting for it. In most cases, foster parents get first right to adoption for their foster animal. If you have a friend or family member interested in adopting, we do require that they have met the animal & spent time with them to ensure the personalities are a good match. Once they have met the animal and have decided they want to adopt (or you’ve decided you want to adopt!) simply reach out to the foster department ASAP to let them know, and they’ll guide you from there!
That’s not a problem at all – we definitely understand that life happens and not all matches are going to be good ones, no matter how hard we try. Just let the foster department know ASAP about the situation, and we’ll work with you to get the foster animals returned to us as quickly as we can. You are never “stuck” with a foster animal.
Are you a current foster parent?
We work diligently to equip every potential foster family with the knowledge they need to be successful. If you have other questions, contact us, and we will be happy to answer any other questions!
Shop and save lives.
If you are not able to foster an animal at this time but still want to help animals in need, consider donating something from our Amazon Wishlist. These items are immediately put to use to save the lives of vulnerable animals in urgent need.
Amazon Wishlist
You can help animals in foster care at ANY time, by ordering much-needed supplies from our Amazon Wishlist. It only takes a few clicks to make a big impact!
Meet our foster team.
Mallory Uzel
Fun fact: "I love fly fishing, hiking, and my very fluffy AHS Alumni cat Lars. I have also adopted fish and a hermit crab from AHS!
Leann Tullock
Fun fact: "I drink iced coffee year-round, even in the middle of winter!"
Nathaniel Gales
Lauren Allen
Fun fact: “I am an avid animal lover who enjoys helping local animal rescues, hiking, and collecting exotic houseplants!”
See what our fosters have to say!
