Stuck at Home? A Free App Is Racing to Pair You With a Foster Dog in Desperate Need

Make social distancing way more fun—and rescue struggling shelters—by fostering a dog

Social distancing getting you down? Is there a better way to burn the endless quarantine hours than helping an animal in need and injecting a little positivity into these unsettled days?

Wondering how to foster a dog and give beleaguered shelters a hand as they struggle to keep services afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic? A brand-new app makes it effortless!

With the current crisis gripping animal shelters around the globe because of the coronavirus, there's an alarming need for foster parents to help shelters place animals into foster homes. But one of the biggest hurdles shelters face is simply finding—and keeping—foster parents.

Enter Colleen Ferguson and her 16-year-old daughter, Tessa. They've fostered nearly 100 kittens, cats, and a couple of puppies. Inspired by their experiences, they created a company called Opening Cages, which provides free services to help animal shelters and rescues.

As pet parents to five animals of their own and veterans of the foster world, they know just how tricky keeping tabs on every animal can be—so they built a free mobile app to make fostering far easier and stress-free! There's even a Pet Owner section to track your own pets. The app stores all the important details about your foster animals so nothing slips through the cracks. It reminds you when to give medications and includes foster-parent training videos available 24/7. Everything you enter for your foster pets flows straight back to your shelter, saving foster coordinators precious time.

The app also features a Foster Parent Recruiting Tool. "We had no idea until now how vital a tool like this would be to shelters in this desperate time when they need foster parents more than ever," says Colleen, pointing to shelters' closures to the public and short staffing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The app lets shelters and rescues use the tool to find foster parents faster. Built-in "Interested in Fostering" videos answer a slew of common questions and objections, saving precious time and human resources. Staff can simply point people to download the app and watch the videos.

The Opening Cages App and all their other services come at no cost to shelters and rescues. "We're thrilled to offer this tool to animal organizations to recruit as many new foster parents as possible right now and hold onto existing ones longer as we move into these uncertain months," says Colleen. "We hope more people will consider fostering right now. What better way to spend quarantine than helping an animal in need and bringing some positivity into these unsettling days?"

For more on Opening Cages and its services, check out OpeningCages.com or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

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