Berg Foster Life - Animal Rescue

Why We Don’t Work With “Networkers” at BFL

There is a reason Berg Foster Life generally does not work with people who identify themselves as animal “networkers.”

Because far too often, networking has stopped being about finding the right outcome for a dog and has become about one thing: getting the dog out of the shelter by any means necessary.

It is the same problem we have repeatedly criticized with the save-rate mentality. When the only measure of success is whether the dog left the building alive, everything that happens afterward becomes somebody else’s problem.

We have watched networkers convince people to commit to fostering dogs they were absolutely not prepared to foster. We have literally seen people told, “Just take the dog, and after a few days tell the rescue you need another foster.” Think about how unethical that is. A rescue agrees to take responsibility for a dog based on the understanding that it has a committed foster, while someone behind the scenes is already telling that foster how to bail.

We have seen people encouraged to foster for “just 24–48 hours” to save a dog when there is absolutely no plan for day three.

That is not rescue. That is moving a crisis from one location to another.

We also fundamentally disagree with the culture of raising pledges and advocating for long-term boarding as though money magically creates a responsible rescue plan. We regularly see statements like “pledges attract rescues,” which should concern everyone. A rescue should take a dog because it has the resources, appropriate foster placement, medical plan, behavioral capacity, and ability to responsibly care for that dog—not because there is a pile of money attached to it.

Then there is the way shelter information gets dismissed. Shelter staff document that a dog is growling, lunging, snapping, attempting to bite, or otherwise displaying concerning behavior, and someone who has never physically met the dog immediately comments, “He’s just scared.”

Maybe he is scared. Fear and dangerous behavior are not mutually exclusive.

Shelter notes matter. Behavior observations matter. Bite histories matter. Medical information matters. They should be considered when deciding whether a rescue or foster is equipped for that particular dog. Telling the public to ignore information because it interferes with an emotional narrative does not help dogs. It creates bad placements.

And that gets to our biggest problem with this kind of networking: emotional manipulation replaces education.

The posts are designed to create urgency, outrage, guilt, and panic. Shelters are accused of “not doing enough.” Comment sections fill with people demanding that somebody—anybody—save the dog. People who have never met the dog, cannot foster the dog, cannot adopt the dog, and are not assuming any responsibility for what happens next become the loudest voices demanding that someone else take the risk.

Some pages have also turned engagement itself into a business model. Outrage, arguments, dramatic comments, and emotionally charged posts generate clicks and attention. When engagement is monetized, there is an obvious incentive to keep people emotional rather than informed.

Meanwhile, the people actually responsible for the dog after the “SAVE” post disappears are left dealing with the consequences.

The rescue has to find the replacement foster.

The rescue pays the boarding bill.

The rescue manages the behavior.

The rescue deals with the bite.

The rescue handles the failed adoption.

The rescue has to make the difficult decisions.

And the networker moves on to tomorrow’s urgent dog.

At BFL, we don't believe in the **right-now match**. We believe in the **right match**.

Sometimes the responsible answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. Sometimes a dog needs a more experienced foster. Sometimes a particular home isn't appropriate. Sometimes the behavior documented by the shelter means a rescue needs to seriously evaluate whether it has the resources and expertise to safely take that dog.

Those decisions aren't as exciting as screaming “SAVE HIM” on Facebook, but they are what responsible rescue actually looks like.

We want people educating the public about how to help effectively. Foster because you are genuinely prepared to foster until an appropriate next placement is found. Adopt because the dog is a good match for your household—not because a countdown made you feel guilty. Donate to organizations whose work you trust. Volunteer. Transport. Help with events. Advocate for responsible pet ownership. Read the shelter notes. Ask questions. Think critically.

Saving a dog from euthanasia today means very little if nobody has thought about what happens to that dog tomorrow.

Getting a dog through the shelter door isn't the finish line.

It's where our responsibility begins.

We are looking for fosters who are interested in short-term fostering — typically just 2–3 weeks!

We usually send dogs to Ruff Start Rescue in Minnesota about twice a month. Once a dog is confirmed for transport, we would love to move them from their regular foster home into a short-term foster home for those final few weeks before they leave.

This is a great option for someone who wants to help foster but cannot commit to keeping a dog until adoption.

Short-term fosters would need to be able to:

• Foster the dog for approximately 2–3 weeks before transport
• Get the dog to their required health certificate appointment on the Tuesday or Wednesday before travel
• Health certificates are done at our vet clinic in the Heights at 7236 Wynwood Ln.
• Have the dog ready to leave Friday morning. Transport leaves from the same general Heights area between 9:30–10:30 AM

Can’t do Friday morning? That may still work! We are often able to find volunteers who can take dogs to transport as long as the dog can be dropped off with them Thursday evening.

These short-term foster homes would be incredibly helpful to our regular foster families. Moving transport-confirmed dogs into short-term homes allows our regular fosters to open their homes back up for another dog who needs to come into rescue.

You get a dog for a few weeks, know exactly when they are leaving, and help us create another open foster spot at the same time.

If short-term fostering sounds like something you could help with, please complete our foster application:

Foster Application:

Berg Foster Life | Apply for Foster: Dog

So, we just learned that it’s **Foster Appreciation Week** this week!

We want to take a moment to say THANK YOU to all of our amazing fosters. You open your homes, rearrange your lives, sacrifice your rugs, clean up things you’d rather not identify, drive to vet appointments, attend adoption events, and love these dogs like your own until it’s time to send them off to their forever homes. We truly could not do this without you.

And because we appreciate you SO much, we wanted to give you a little something special as a token of our gratitude.

**We will be sending you another foster.**

You’re welcome.

Happy Foster Appreciation Week from Berg Foster Life, where apparently the reward for fostering is… more fostering.

We know this may be an unpopular opinion in rescue, but we do not believe shelters making euthanasia lists public—or volunteers and networkers blasting rescue-only, behavior, or significant medical dogs all over social media—is always helping those dogs. In some cases, we believe it can actually make their situation worse.

When the public sees a dog with a countdown attached to it—“DEADLINE TODAY,” “MUST BE OUT BY 1,” “WILL DIE TOMORROW”—people understandably get emotional. Someone rushes to the shelter because they want to **save the RIGHT NOW dog**. The problem is that saving a dog in that moment and choosing the right dog for your family are two very different things.

Maybe that dog is on the list because of behaviors that are going to require an experienced home. Maybe the dog has significant medical needs. Maybe it needs another dog in the home—or absolutely cannot live with another dog. Maybe it needs a quiet adult household, while the person rushing to save it has three young children. Those things get pushed aside because the decision is no longer, “Is this the right dog for my home?” It becomes, “If I don't take this dog right now, it might die.”

Then reality hits.

The dog starts displaying the same behavior that contributed to it being placed on the euthanasia list in the first place, or its medical needs become more than the adopter anticipated. The adopter realizes this wasn't the right match and returns the dog. Now that dog is right back where it started—except sometimes in an even worse position. The original social-media urgency has disappeared, everyone has moved on to the next deadline dog, and now the dog also has an adoption return attached to its history. Suddenly people are asking, “Why was it returned?” and becoming even more hesitant to adopt.

We feel similarly about networking rescue-only dogs to random people willing to become brand-new fosters specifically to save one dog. **Rescues should be networking rescue-only dogs they can actually take with their CURRENT foster base—not counting on brand-new fosters recruited through an emergency social-media post.** That doesn't mean every person who sees a deadline dog and agrees to foster will bail. Some become incredible, long-term fosters. But after years of rescue, we have seen the pattern far too many times: someone makes an emotional commitment because a dog's life is on the line, and once the dog is safe, reality sets in. Then the rescue is left scrambling to find somewhere for a dog it never actually had space to take.

And that is why we believe there is a difference between **networking responsibly and creating panic.**

If someone truly wants to adopt a shelter dog, we want them to physically go to the shelter. Walk the kennels. Talk to staff. Meet several dogs. Tell them about your household, your other animals, your children, your lifestyle and what you're actually looking for. Then choose the dog that is the **right dog for your family**, not simply the dog social media told you needed to leave **RIGHT NOW**.

Because adoption shouldn't just be about getting a dog out of the shelter today. It should be about making sure that dog doesn't come back tomorrow.

**We don't want people adopting the RIGHT NOW dog. We want them adopting the RIGHT dog.**

Heartworms are caused by a parasite that is transmitted through mosquitoes. A mosquito bites an infected animal, picks up microscopic heartworm larvae and then passes those larvae to another dog when it bites again. Heartworms are not contagious from dog to dog. Dogs do not get heartworms from sharing bowls, playing together, living together or simply being around a heartworm-positive dog. Mosquitoes are the reason prevention is so important.

Heartworms are one of the tougher parts of dog rescue. At any given time, we usually have 6–10 heartworm-positive dogs in our care, and over the years we have treated hundreds upon hundreds of them. One of the biggest things we try to do is educate people about heartworm disease, because being heartworm positive should not automatically become a death sentence simply because a rescue is afraid to take the dog or an adopter is afraid to adopt one.

One of the biggest misconceptions we need to get rid of is the idea that “slow kill” is heartworm treatment. What people commonly call slow kill usually involves doxycycline and monthly heartworm prevention while waiting for the adult worms to eventually die. The problem is that those adult worms can live for years, and while they are still there, they are continuing to cause damage. The American Heartworm Society specifically states that slow-kill methods are less effective than adulticide treatment and may fail to eliminate all of the worms even after 18 months or longer. (American Heartworm Society⁠)

This is also something adopters need to pay attention to when choosing a rescue. If you are considering adopting a heartworm-positive dog and the rescue tells you their treatment plan is “slow kill,” ask questions. We would seriously reconsider adopting from a rescue that knowingly sends heartworm-positive dogs into homes without providing actual adulticide treatment when the dog is medically able to receive it.

Melarsomine injections are the FDA-approved adulticide treatment for heartworm disease in dogs and are the treatment used to kill the adult worms. The American Heartworm Society recommends melarsomine-based adulticide treatment rather than simply waiting for the worms to eventually die. There are different melarsomine protocols used in veterinary medicine, including in shelter and rescue settings, so the important distinction here is not whether a rescue uses two injections or three. It is whether the dog has received actual adulticide treatment to kill the adult heartworms. (American Heartworm Society⁠)

And that brings us to the part of this conversation that we absolutely should not sugarcoat: heartworms cause damage to the heart, lungs and pulmonary arteries. There is no way around that. How much damage has occurred varies tremendously from dog to dog depending on the number of worms, how long the infection has been present, the dog’s age and the individual dog’s response to the disease. Adulticide treatment kills the worms so that ongoing infection is being addressed, but it cannot magically erase every change that occurred before treatment.

That does not mean every dog that has been heartworm positive is going to develop heart disease or have a shortened life. We have treated hundreds and hundreds of dogs. We have had some that showed cardiac or respiratory problems after treatment, but we have had many others live for years and years with no noticeable residual effects. In many of them, you would never know they had ever been heartworm positive.

Adopters who want more information about an individual dog’s heart and lungs can always talk with their veterinarian about chest X-rays and other testing to look for changes associated with previous heartworm disease and discuss whether any long-term monitoring is appropriate. That is a reasonable conversation to have, just like we would have conversations about any significant medical history.

Heartworms are preventable. They are treatable. And a history of heartworm disease does not make a dog unadoptable. Heartworm-positive dogs still deserve rescue, proper medical treatment, adoption and families who love them. For many of them, once the adult worms are gone and treatment is behind them, heartworms simply become one part of their medical history rather than something that defines the rest of their life.

More information:

American Heartworm Society Canine Heartworm Guidelines
https://www.heartwormsociety.org/veterinary-resources/american-heartworm-society-guidelines/canine

American Heartworm Society — The AHS Protocol vs. “Slow Kill”
https://www.heartwormsociety.org/resources/65-clinical-faqs/507-the-ahs-protocol-vs-slow-kill

American Heartworm Society — Managing Heartworm Disease in Shelter Animals
https://www.heartwormsociety.org/resources/65-clinical-faqs/281-managing-heartworm-disease-in-shelter-animals

Managing Heartworm Disease in Shelter Animals MARTHA SMITH-BLACKMORE, DVM Heartworm disease (HWD), caused by the mosquito-borne nematode Dirofilaria immitis, is endemic in most areas of the...

Here at Berg Foster Life, we do whatever is necessary to have a good adoption event.

Sometimes that means hauling kennels, setting everything up, talking to adopters, cleaning up accidents, and keeping everyone happy. And sometimes it means standing in front of Sofia’s kennel so she can stand on my shoulder because apparently that was the ONLY way she was going to stop barking.

Whatever it takes, Sofia. Whatever it takes.

Apparently this is a post that needs to be made based on some of the comments on our last one about **reducing barriers to adoption.**

When we talk about reducing barriers to adoption as a rescue philosophy, we are talking about **private rescue organizations. Municipal shelters are a completely different animal.**

A municipal shelter is a government entity. That means it operates under legal requirements that a private rescue simply does not. State and local governments are subject to civil-rights protections in the programs and services they provide, including protections against disability discrimination under Title II of the ADA and, when federal funding is involved, protections against discrimination based on race, color, and national origin under Title VI.

That does **not** mean shelters cannot have adoption policies or make reasonable, animal-specific decisions. They absolutely can enforce ordinances, licensing requirements, animal limits, landlord requirements where applicable, and restrictions or recommendations based on the needs of a particular animal. But they have far less freedom than a private rescue to make subjective decisions about who they think should or should not adopt.

A private rescue can look at an application and say, “We don't think this puppy is the best match for your household, but we have an adult dog we think would be perfect.” We can decide that a particular dog needs another dog in the home, a fenced yard, no young children, an experienced adopter, or someone who is home more often. We can have conversations, evaluate the entire situation and make a judgment call about placement.

Municipal shelters have to be much more careful about creating screening criteria that could treat people differently based on protected characteristics or otherwise expose the city or county to discrimination claims. Title II of the ADA, for example, applies broadly to state and local government services and requires equal opportunity for people with disabilities to participate.

And yes, we have watched some shelters respond to that risk by moving toward extremely open adoption models with very little screening. Do we necessarily believe that is the best way to place every animal? **No.** But do we understand why government agencies living in our incredibly litigation-happy society sometimes decide that the safest policy for the municipality is to remove as much subjective decision-making as possible? Absolutely.

That is why people need to stop comparing a municipal shelter's adoption process to a private rescue's adoption process as though they operate under the same rules.

They don't.

One of the biggest parts of our rescue philosophy is **education and reducing unnecessary barriers to adoption.**

Somewhere along the way, though, "reducing barriers" got twisted into **"no barriers."** Those are absolutely not the same thing.

Reducing barriers doesn't mean handing a dog to anyone who wants one. It doesn't mean ignoring red flags on an application, overlooking safety concerns or pretending every dog can live successfully in every home. It doesn't mean rescues shouldn't have standards. And it certainly doesn't mean that because someone wants a particular dog, they are automatically entitled to adopt that dog.

Our goal when someone applies isn't to figure out why we should tell them no. It's to determine whether we have a dog that is a good fit for their home and, when there are gaps in knowledge or experience, whether we can fill those gaps through education.

We don't expect adopters to be perfect pet owners. We aren't perfect pet owners. Someone may not know everything about heartworm prevention, decompression, crate training, vaccines, introducing a new dog or why certain things matter. Not knowing doesn't automatically make someone a bad adopter. Sometimes it simply means nobody has ever taught them.

But there is a big difference between **someone who doesn't know and is willing to learn** and someone who is given information and chooses to disregard it. Education can overcome a lack of knowledge. It cannot overcome an unwillingness to provide appropriate care.

Some dogs also absolutely have specific requirements. A fearful dog may need another confident dog in the home. A dog with a bite history may not be appropriate around young children. A high-energy dog may need a family prepared for that energy. Sometimes the answer really is no. But that decision should be based on the needs and safety of the individual dog—not an arbitrary checklist designed to eliminate people.

We also don't believe in creating barriers simply because "that's how rescue has always done it." Owning a home doesn't automatically make someone a better pet owner than renting. Having a fenced yard doesn't guarantee a dog will be exercised or cared for properly. Working outside the home doesn't mean someone can't provide an incredible home. And a veterinary record that isn't absolutely perfect doesn't automatically tell us how someone will care for their next pet.

Applications should start conversations, not interrogations. But those conversations still matter.

And education has to go beyond telling people what they *should* do. If we tell communities they need to vaccinate, microchip and spay or neuter their pets while ignoring whether those services are affordable or accessible, we haven't solved anything. That's why community outreach and providing access to those services are such an important part of what we do.

**Reducing barriers doesn't mean eliminating standards. It means making sure the barriers we put in place actually protect the animal or contribute to a successful placement.**

Our job isn't to find perfect people. It's to make good matches, educate when we can, provide resources when possible and help ordinary people become successful pet owners.

Because every good home we unnecessarily turn away doesn't just affect the dog they wanted to adopt. That dog stays in foster care longer, which means we don't have space for the next dog sitting in a shelter waiting for someone to say yes.

We would much rather spend our energy helping someone become a great pet owner than searching for reasons they aren't already one. But reducing unnecessary barriers will never mean ignoring the ones that actually matter.