Demand for Change in Animal Services/Animal Shelter Off-site Fostering Policy

Current policy for the Escambia County Animal Shelter (and other Florida Counties as well) prohibits off-site fostering of any animal over 8 weeks of age, thus seriously impacting the potential that a great number of animals will have the oppertunity to avoid being unnescessarily euthanized and have homes located for them. This policy only serves to minimally prevent the needless loss of impounded animals' lives; moreover, this policy focuses only on the age range of animals with the greatest liklihood of permanent adoption.

With the already abbreviated time period Escambia County Animal Shelter holds animals whose age has surpassed the 8 week mark, disallowing off-site fostering effectively serves to substantially decrease the odds that an adolescent or adult dog/cat will have the oppertunity to be placed in a long term home.

A change in this policy would not result in any additional expense to local government, nor would it require any additional expenditure of the already limited agency resources on hand. Such a change would impact only the ability of volunteers to take off-site placements of abandoned/neglected animals past 8 weeks which, under current policy, are not available for fostering.