Is fostering a dog right for you?

Dogs on our Home from Home scheme are all looking for their forever homes, and whilst the dog is in foster care, we continue our search for potential adopters. Your experience of caring for them is vital in helping us find them their perfect match.

Once a new owner is selected, the dog will head off to their forever home! It’s unlikely that you will meet the new adopter or receive updates on the dog in their new home, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing you made a huge difference in that dog’s life.

We will then place you back on the list for the next suitable dog. 

We will advise you on what supplies you will need when we match you with a suitable dog. As a minimum, all our foster dogs will go home with food, a collar, a harness and a lead.

The dogs we place on foster tend to be the most vulnerable in our care. They may be older dogs, injured or unwell dogs, puppies or dogs who may be finding kennel life a little overwhelming. Because of this, these dogs are often not on our website as they may not be ready for rehoming just yet.

Our Foster Coordinator will match you with one of these dogs based on your application to ensure the best experience for both the foster carer and the foster dog. You will always have the final say in if you want to take on that specific foster dog.

Absolutely! Our underdogs have been here for a while and are often overlooked. We would love to find out more information on how they behave in a home to help find their forever family. These dogs would be best suited to a home with adults and foster carers who are interested in training. A home with no other pets would be essential and people who would have the time to meet the dog multiple times in the centre so you can build a bond before bringing the dog to your home. We are also looking for people who would be happy to foster their underdog for a minimum of 6 months as these dogs can take a while to adjust to big changes, like leaving our rehoming centre for example.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please contact our fostering team.

Foster families always have first choice to adopt their foster dog.

Our adoption fee is €275 for adult dogs and this fee helps us to cover the costs of caring for over 1,500 dogs every year.
Our fee for adopting a puppy under 6 months is €325. This includes the €275 rehoming fee and a reduced €50 online Dog School fee. Our Dog School classes help puppies learn key life skills and teach owners the basic training skills they need to create a strong bond with their new dog.
Every dog adopted from Dogs Trust is:
- Microchipped
- Vaccinated
- Vet Checked
If your new dog is not already neutered at the time of adoption, you will go home with a voucher of €120 towards the cost of neutering a male or €150 towards the cost of spaying a female dog at a local veterinary practice.
You will also receive a starter bag of food, a collar and lead.
Once they're at home, you'll be able to access advice from the centre team if you need to.

This varies for each dog in our care. The average time a dog is in a foster home is 4 weeks. However, this may be shorter or longer based on that specific dogs requirements. We will give you an estimate of how long the dog will be with you when we find a suitable match.

No! Now more than ever we need foster families all around the country to help us look after dogs. If you have a secure garden with someone home most of the time, we would love to hear from you! If you live outside the greater Dublin area, we will drop the dog to you and collect them when they are going to their forever home.

We ask foster families to have a secure garden for a number of reasons. We help a lot of dogs that have had a very hard start to life and can be very nervous of people and are often not toilet trained. Because of this, they may be fearful of wearing collars or leads to go on walks. They would therefore need a safe, secure garden to build up confidence and also to go to the bathroom. We also have a lot of dogs that are afraid of the world and can find going on walks very scary and need a haven. Additionally, many dogs that come into our care have never had vaccinations which means they cannot go on walks as they can pick up parvovirus which can be fatal.

The dogs in our care, be they puppies or adults, that go on foster would need homes where they were not left alone for more than four hours during the day which is why we look for homes where someone is there most of the time.  The foster programme is in place for a variety of reasons, for puppies who would require early socialisation and training, injured dogs requiring care or adult dogs needing time, attention, and company throughout the day.  As most of our dogs have been rescued and may have experienced some sort of trauma, we would wish to place them in foster home where they would not be alone for long periods of time.