My name is Diana, and I’m a foster for Anthem Pets Animal Rescue. I’m a retired 911 Police Dispatcher and moved to Arizona from San Diego in November 2021.
Along with my adult son who co-owns our house, we have 10 dogs of our own, mostly seniors who we rescued from a kill shelter in San Bernardino in 2014 and 2015. We adopted and rescued about 35 small-ish dogs from there, many whom were only hours or moments away from euthanasia. We rehabbed them and adopted out most of them, but we did keep five of them, and four are still with us! We also adopted Greyhounds who were rescued from the Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana through two different Greyhound Rescue groups in San Diego. My son volunteered with one of them when he was in high school and needed volunteer hours to graduate, and that put us on the path to adopt Greyhounds. We have kept a pair of them in our house for over 10 years. Thankfully, the Caliente Racetrack closed down last year, so there is no longer such a dire need to get Greyhounds adopted into homes.
I started fostering for Anthem Pets Animal Rescue in May 2024. I saw an Anthem Pets Facebook post looking for a foster for a 9-year-old Chihuahua mom and her 6-year-old daughter who the owner was relinquishing. I thought, “Why not, they’re small like most of our pack,” and since it was Cinco de Mayo and they were Chihuahuas, I felt like I needed to do this and could easily do this! I had them for about a month before I decided that I NEEDED to adopt them. My very first fosters for Anthem Pets were Foster Fails! Since then, I’ve had probably a dozen foster doggos, and they all went on to be placed in wonderful homes with wonderful new families. Many of these families stay in touch and send me photos and updates, which I love
The people I’ve worked with at Anthem Pets Animal Rescue have been great and have made fostering as easy and pain free as they possibly can. They’ve provided everything I need to manage up to 14 dogs in my house, and they actively promote their foster pets so we can get them into permanent homes and make room to save more. I probably won’t be replacing my 10 mostly senior dogs as they depart to the Rainbow Bridge because I’m a senior too, and that’s a lot of dogs! But I will very likely continue taking in little Anthem Pets fosters, so I can do my part to get these poor little guys rescued and moved on to happy forever homes. It’s been a very rewarding way to give back just a bit to the community, and I would recommend it to anyone!
*********************
Please consider becoming a foster. The need is great, and you can make a real difference in the life of a pet. Click here to read about fostering with Anthem Pets.