'They become like your other child': What it's like to foster a therapy dog

“It takes a village to get these puppies from eight weeks to formal training ready. So when our long-term fosters need to go on holidays or when they have an emergency, we have an additional network of fosters that we call temporary fosters. They take the dogs for short, sporadic days.

“It could be a week, it could be 10 days, it could be a weekend. It really varies. And these people are crucial to what we do because we don’t have a kennel facility, and it’s less stressful for the dogs to be in a home environment.” 

These temporary foster families step in over the holidays, including Christmas, to give long-term foster families some respite. Michelle McCaffrey from Limerick is a long-term fosterer, and her family often provides temporary boarding to support other foster families. Just now, the McCaffrey family is waiting for a new puppy to arrive for the Christmas holidays.

“We’re waiting for an eight-week puppy to arrive at the moment. It’ll be fun to have them over the Christmas holidays. I hope the Christmas tree survives,” says McCaffrey.

This isn’t the McCaffrey family’s first rodeo; they’ve been fostering AADI dogs for eight and a half years, during which time they have fostered more than 30 puppies. 

Even after all that time, McCaffery says it is difficult to say goodbye to the puppies once they’ve been matched with a family or they’re returning to their long-term foster home.

She said: “It doesn’t matter whether you have a puppy for two weeks or two months, they get under your skin. They all have different characters — some are funnier than others, some are gentle souls. 

Because you can bring them out and about when you’re training them — to go into shops and restaurants and whatever — they become like your other child.

"No matter what, when I’m handing any dog back, the sunglasses go on and the tears drop down.” 

Making an impact Martina O’Neill, also from Limerick and a long-time fosterer for AADI, feels the same about the dogs: “Last Christmas we had three puppies over the holidays. At the moment, we have one puppy — with another arriving next week, and if a home falls through for another one, we will take them too.” 

That’s three puppies added to an already busy household. The family has two of their own dogs, a rabbit, a cockatoo, and two children. They’ve been fostering with the AADI for seven years now, so their kids have grown up with the puppies coming and going.

O’Neill explains how fostering puppies has benefited her children: “While we haven’t been touched by autism in our family, we have friends who have, and it’s great for our kids to see that we can give back and help those families.”

It’s the same for McCaffrey: “For my lads growing up it has definitely shown them empathy and they’ve been privileged enough to meet some of the families that have gotten their dogs, and to see the difference the dogs make makes them incredibly proud of the dogs we’ve had.” 

The AADI understands how valuable their foster families are, and they do their best to keep the families updated on the dogs they’ve fostered.

O’Neill says: “We had a dog called Mustard last year and he’s now with a foster family in Cork, and is going to be matched with a child after Christmas.

They sent us his picture the other day, and there he is sitting in front of a Christmas tree, just last year he was here with us chewing the Christmas tree. The photos are a nice way of showing you how you’ve helped. And you get to see what the dogs are doing now, and that they’re happy.

“We had another dog called George, and one day myself and my husband were out in the car and we saw a dog and we said ‘That’s definitely George’. 

"He was helping a young kid, and he looked incredible. We were so happy to see him.” 

Knowing the puppies are going on to make such a positive impact on another family’s life makes it all worthwhile for McCaffrey: “Volunteering with AADI has been life changing for us. To see the difference the dogs make when they go on to their families is incredible. 

"That’s the reason you do it; you’re a part of that by providing a safe place for the puppies when they need it.” 

Long road to qualification It’s a long road for the puppies who go on to become assistance dogs.

Rose Hurley explains: “The puppies begin their training when they are eight weeks old, and it can take up to two years for them to be fully trained. AADI matches around 30 dogs with families each year, and this year we also placed eight qualified education support dogs in primary and post-primary schools.”

In all, the organisation trains between 80 and 90 puppies a year. With that many dogs, it’s easy to see how important the foster families are to the organisation.

“We have between 90 and 100 foster families on the books at any one time,” explains David McCarthy, head of fundraising and communications at AADI.

As well as providing a safe place for the dogs, foster families provide crucial socialisation training for the puppies, Hurley explains: “Socialisation is as important as their general training.

That means getting the puppy out to environments they’re going to need to be comfortable working in when they’re qualified... places like restaurants, cafés, shopping centres, and playgrounds.

"We try to expose the puppies in a measured, controlled way, so that they get gradual exposure and build up their confidence.

“Temporary foster families are not required to do shop walks, or the cafés or restaurants. If a dog goes into a temporary foster home, they have a few days off. The family might take them out for what we call maintenance walks, so they don’t have to wear their jacket and they’re not in training mode, so to speak.

"And that’s really because it wouldn’t be fair if a dog is going to a new environment and new person for only a couple of days.” The organisation’s training facility is in Little Island, Cork. Here, the training dogs learn how to be assistance dogs.

“We have a network of temporary fosterers who take the training dogs in the evenings and on the weekends. Those people need to be located close to Little Island so they can drop and collect the dogs every day — it’s like the school run,” says Hurley.

For anyone thinking of being a therapy dog foster family, McCaffrey says to give it a go: “The AADI provides everything including loads of support. You’re not being thrown into it. If you feel like you want to give something back, it’s a wonderful opportunity to make a huge difference to a family.”