How can you help a pet in need?

Cats and dogs leave shelters for forever or foster homes every day. —There are some pets continuously left behind wondering when it will be their turn to experience a family.

And these days, more and more pets are left behind due to a lack of foster homes.

“Fosters are everything,” said Johanna Baeyens, founder of the nonprofit shelter Lend-A-Paw. “I think every dog should go to a foster, just to know what it’s like in a home setting.”

Baeyens, who started Lend-A-Paw out of her garage in Lynbrook during the pandemic, said experiencing a foster home is critical for an animal’s well-being and their capacity to adjust to home life. However, fewer people are stepping up to foster — but the need for them is growing.

“I don’t have any fosters right now,” Baeyens said. “There’s literally not one person I can call to be like ‘hey, can you hold this dog for a bit?’”

Lend-A-Paw was able to move from Baeyens’ home to an Oceanside storefront in 2021. It’s perfect for their cat tenants. But dogs, which require more space, need to be placed with foster families. If there are none available, they need to be turned away — which can be the difference between life and death.

Lend A Paw rescues pups from euthanasia lists. The shelter has been able to stretch its means as much as possible — but they can’t stretch much more.

“If we don’t have fosters we can’t take in any animals,” Baeyens said. “We have four dogs in boarding right now, and that is way past the financial capacity that we have.”

Boarding means that the dogs are housed in a separate facility, while Lend A Paw continues to provide the animal’s food, supplies, and medical resources — on top of paying the facility for housing the animal. It’s simply unsustainable for the nonprofit funded entirely from donations.

“Boarding situations were kind of our last resort,” Baeyens said. “But now there’s just so many dogs that need foster homes that we don’t know what to do with them.”

On top of that, there are seven families who no longer want to be fosters and are trying to return their dogs. Baeyens and the volunteers at Lend A Paw are struggling to find a place for them.

“At the moment we haven’t resorted to moving into other shelters, but the boarding facility, they’re maxed out,” Baeyens said. “We legitimately have no place for these dogs to go.”

Fostering gives dogs a chance to adjust to home life, while letting both the foster and Lend A Paw learn more about the dog’s personality. When a dog is in a home environment, a foster may learn that the dog is good with young kids, or should be in a one-dog household, or prefers the company of cats. Lend A Paw wants to learn as much as they can about each dog so they can be placed with the best possible forever home match, rather than be set up for failure.

“They are analyzing and watching and learning from the dogs,” Baeyens said of fosters. “So we know how to better place them.”

For Jill and Joanna Palumbo, a mother and daughter who have been volunteering at Lend A Paw for a year and a half, fostering changed their lives.

“She was the runt of the litter,” said Joanna, 16, of their cat Juliette. “It was really a one-in-a-lifetime experience because she wasn’t doing well. We had to hand feed her. She almost didn’t make it.

“It was definitely a great experience. It just felt good that we saved her.”

The Palumbos described themselves as “failed fosters” — meaning they couldn’t help but fall in love with Juliette and adopt her. They want the same loving home for the other animals that Lend A Paw cares for.

“A lot of the cats that we find are scared and shy,” Joanna said. “But the more they’re around people and they have more human interaction, they break out of their shell and become more friendly. They don’t feel so scared. They can feel loved and cared for.”

One older cat, Anabelle, had been mistreated in a previous home. Matted and mistrusting, she disliked being around other cats and was in the shelter “for the longest time,” Joanna’s mom Jill said. But once she went to a foster home, the difference was night and day — Lend A Paw received videos of Annabelle happy and playing in her new home.

“When they’re being fostered, it’s a whole different atmosphere for them,” Joanna said. “They feel more comfortable. The progress you see is amazing.”

To learn more about Lend A Paw, visit LendAPawInc.com. For those interested in fostering, visit LendAPawInc.com/foster.