Tell us about your experience by filling out this form , and your story might get shared on our social media channels!

We believe that the animals who enter our shelters deserve to have the best possible chance at finding a loving home of their own. A foster parent has one of the most important jobs at the shelter. Foster parents make sure our animals get the home care and attention they deserve as they wait for adoption. As a foster parent you’ll not only save the lives of animals in your care, but you’ll give other animals coming into the shelter the space they need. If those aren’t enough reasons to become a foster parent, consider these:

It will be a labor of love that will leave you with great memories to cherish long after your foster animals have been placed into permanent loving homes.

LA Animal Services Foster program is for kittens, puppies, cats and adult dogs. As long as you can give some love and time to these orphaned animals, any animal you take in will benefit from foster care!

Foster Volunteers are Lifesavers

Have you longed to help shelter pets live happy lives?

Would you like to help animals and raise a litter at the same time?

Each year, kittens and puppies are born with no one to take care of them. Most humane organizations cannot take care of underage puppies and kittens because they do not have the personnel to provide the special attention for these little ones. They need people who are willing to raise the puppies and kittens until they are 8 to 10 weeks old when they can be returned to the shelter to be spayed or neutered and placed in permanent homes.

At LA Animal Services, our ability to take in these abandoned animals is directly dependent on the number of reliable foster volunteers we have waiting to take these babies home to raise. We believe foster homes are the future of lifesaving. The more foster volunteers we have, the more lives we can save.

Our foster volunteers are a rugged group of very caring people who do everything from bottle feeding orphaned babies around the clock, to socializing little ones to ensure that they look forward to human and animal interaction. The foster volunteers provide care, safety and love.

If you have the time and can allocate some space in your home for puppies or kittens, here are the steps to follow:

Visit laanimalservices.com/adopt to see our animals and identify one to three animals you may want to foster, and get their Animal ID number or A# (example:A1234567)

Email the volunteer liaison at ani.volunteers@lacity.org with your completed foster application (if you have not fostered before) with the Animal ID number(s) of the pets you want to meet.

We will call you once your application is reviewed to schedule an appointment.

It will be a labor of love that will leave you with great memories to cherish long after your foster animals have been placed into permanent loving homes.

LA Animal Services will offer you as much training as you need. Help from our staff is just a phone call away. Each of our fosters parents are given training which may be quite short if you’re wanting to foster an adult dog who desperately needs to get out of the busy, noisy and many times frightening shelter environment, or longer if you need to be trained in Baby Bottle Feeding of kittens or puppies.

Not only does our foster program maximize the number of animals rescued and saved, it allows LA Animal Services to care for animals who would be difficult to care for in our shelter environment-orphaned or shy kittens or dogs needing one-on-one behavior rehabilitation. For animals who may need a break from the sometimes crazy shelter environment, foster care provides a comfortable home setting that keeps these foster companions happy and healthy. And now YOU have the opportunity to involve yourself in this lifesaving mission.

Foster care volunteers provide temporary care for kittens, puppies, dogs and cats. Some animals may only need a home for several days or weeks, while others may need several months of care. By offering your home to an animal in need, you prepare an animal for adoption into a permanent home as well as DIRECTLY SAVING LIVES by fostering animals from our overcrowded shelters. LA Animal Services is always looking for foster families to help save more animal lives.

Foster parenting can be more flexible than other volunteer jobs that require people to show up for a specific shift during limited times of the day and for a committed length of time. LA Animal Services Foster program is flexible, fun and rewarding once you’re learned how to take care of your temporary companion animals!

For example, you might be a family that is available to foster a litter of kittens for two weeks; GREAT! LA Animal Services will give you some six-week-old kittens so in two weeks they can be put up for adoption at one of our shelters! Or, we can give you a litter of four-week-old kittens who you can place in another foster home after two weeks.