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BARCS Looking For Fosters To Care For Animals During COVID-19 Pandemic, Holiday Season

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter is looking for animal lovers to foster some furry friends during the holiday season.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, BARCS had many people reach out to foster animals. Since then, those requests have dropped but the shelter is full.

"Everybody's got a little bit of the pandemic fatigue and we haven't been getting as many people coming to us to foster," Bailey Deacon, BARCS' director of community engagement, said. "At the same time, our intake has gone up, so we have a lot of animals who need to get out of the shelter and we need more fosters to help us."

Right now, the shelter has a limited staff, so a foster family could give an animal a safe, loving temporary home.

"A lot of the time it's only for a week or two before we get an adopter," Deacon said, "because right now, adoptions are still very popular, they're through the roof. We're getting multiple applications for every animal so not every foster situation is a long-term one."

Potential foster parents can fill out a questionnaire on BARCS' website. Then the foster team will find the right match. Right now, their biggest need is medium to large adult dogs and adult cats, Deacon said.

"Most of our animals are ready to go into a home to be adopted; they just haven't found that adopter yet, so we're asking people to open their homes and be a piece of our shelter," she said.

To learn more, visit BARCS' website. For those who want to help in other ways, the organization has set up an Amazon wish list.

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