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We started the year strong, and we tackled a lot of “to dos” and initiatives. Kudos on the hard work.
PLACEMENTS:
We had 209 intakes and 43 transfers to new fosters, for a total of 252 placements. Notable placements include: Spanky, Mr. Marbles, and China!
ADOPTIONS:
We had 191 adoptions. Notably, some great adoptions of medical and former Distemper dogs this month: Moaning Myrtle, Bert, Hadley, Konichihuahua, Becall, Sassy, Hannah, Coraline, Ribbit, Valo, Jolly, and Blue Bayou. Long stay Patricia (329 net days) was adopted by our Cat Program Manager!
VOLUNTEER WELCOMES & NEWS:
Welcome to Daniel B., Michelle K., and Kate P. on the Dog Foster Care Team!
SHOUT OUTS:
Shout out to Jennifer Dawson, our Dog Foster Adoption Team Lead, who has been phenomenal in not only handling our increased volume but also some pretty challenging situations lately (competing puppy adoptions are no joke y’all). Like almost everyone on the team, Jennifer is a volunteer who does in addition to her personal and professional life. We thank her for her reliability, her advice, and her can-do attitude.
HIGHLIGHTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, AND INITIATIVES:
CONGRATULATIONS to Jennifer Steinfeld, our former Dog Foster Adoption Team Lead, on the birth of her second child. Jennifer had her baby girl on 1/17/2019 named Stella Ruth Steinfeld and is taking an extended break from volunteering with us. She hopes to come back to volunteer again when things have settled down and Stella is older. She will be missed! They are all doing well.
We held our foster brainstorming session on recruitment, onboarding, and engagement/retention and have already implemented many of the proposed solutions, like making our Dog Foster Resource Website and our mission statement more visible. More to come on how you can become involved on implementing the longer-lead solutions.
We’ve started to count sleepovers and sitter placements as key performance indicators and tracking adoption inquiries. More data = a better program!
During the cold weather snap, we successfully placed 93 dogs on sleepovers, with 23 converting to fosters!
We placed 30 out of 47 “Home Notes Sleepover” dogs pled.
We had a massive reduction in Distemper/Distemper watch dogs in foster with only 5 remaining and 2 of those have clearance appts in the next couple days. There are also no more distemper suspects onsite!
We were able to get lots of foster dogs spayed/ neutered in January and lots are already scheduled for February. Usually we are a couple months out with that process, so we are making headwaves in improving the surgery backlog.
GOAL FOR FEBRUARY 2019!
Stories!!! We learned during our brainstorming session that we can do a better job of sharing the foster experience and crowd sourcing the expertise in this huge foster community of which we are all fortunate to be a part. As a result, Regan posted on our APA! Dog Foster Facebook Page asking for fosters’ stories, and we reached out to three of our most experienced fosters (thank you Linda O., Karen P., and Beverly R.) for testimonials on maternity fostering, which resulted in increased placements of pregnant moms! So we need your stories and testimonials - please share your experiences and pictures with us. Please also share your ideas on the best platform to share these to increase foster engagement, and hopefully, willingness to handle the dogs that require a bit more TLC.
Onward and upward!