LANSING, Mich. — If you're looking for a way to stay entertained and give back while in quarantine, fostering a pet might be a solution.
The Ingham County Animal Shelter is still adopting out animals right now, but the way they're doing that is looking a lot different these days.
When people make an appointment to adopt at the shelter, that's happening through glass, but many adoptions are happening virtually.
Ingham County Animal Control Director Heidi Williams says those fostering animals have been helping find those pets permanent homes.
"The fosters are getting to know these animals a lot better than we ever could in a shelter environment so they're actually able to tell the potential adopters a lot more aobut the pets than we can" said Williams.
Fostering has increased recently, as many people are hunkered down at home.
"I think it's providing comfort to people too. I think it's giving them something to do and a reason to wake up every morning and kind of keep a normal routine so to speak. I mean I'm even fostering one which has been just a lot of fun"
Getting the animals out of the shelter and into homes at least temporarily is also helping keep staff safe.
"I don't even want to imagine the positing we would find ourselves in right now if we didn't have our foster families. We would have close to 200 which would just put the burden of care on our staff. We would not be able to keep our care staff numbers down and that would just mean more exposure to everybody so it's literally lifesaving."
The Ingham County Animal Shelter also has a pet food bank for those who are having trouble feeding their pets.
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