Focus On The Frosty Face Fostering Programme

The Cape Dachshund Rescue group’s Frosty Face Fostering Programme aims to free up space in their organisation while offering elderly dogs and retirees the chance for a once-in-a-lifetime companionship.

- Greer Rees

It was conceived over a windy weekend in May 2016, and why that’s vivid in my memory is because Kara (our Chairperson) and I were supposed to be out pillion on our husbands’ bikes. The wind had everything akimbo that miserable weekend and the motorcycles didn’t stand a chance, so we ended up doing that rare “weekend away from everything” in a car.

Stuck in the back of the car with nothing to do but some virtual dog rescue on our phones and yak about shoes, we began talking about the elderly in both humans and dogs. The thing is, we’d had so many pensioners mentioning on our Facebook page and in emails that the adoption fee was unaffordable for a person earning a pittance of a pension and the cost of the potential ensuing vet bills could be crippling. And we both felt this was an injustice. Backwards and forwards it went all the while, boring our two long-suffering husbands.

“So, what happens”, Kara asked me, “if we retain the ownership of the dog?”

I’d not quite read her mind yet, so she went on to explain further: “Well, if Cape Dachshund Rescue retains the ownership of the dog, we can legitimately treat it medically, right? So, how about we don’t adopt them out but ask pensioners to foster them? That way we can ask the public to help with the vet bills and keep an old dog with a pensioner in foster forever. Like uniting the retired with the retired. What do you think?”

“SHALL WE CALL IT THE FROSTY FACE FOSTER PROGRAMME?”

I yelled in a shouty voice. And so it began, as with all our bright ideas. As an amoeba, it starts and flourishes into action after she and I have batted things around.

SO, HOW DOES IT WORK?