Thirty Years in Pet. Forty-Plus Foster Dogs in Three Years. Here's What I Know for Certain.

I have spent more than three decades studying the pet industry, analyzing consumer behavior, advising brands, tracking category trends, and building research frameworks that help companies understand what pet owners want, need, and feel. I have watched this industry grow from a niche market into a $158 billion economic force in 2025.

But nothing in 30 years of professional life has taught me more about dogs—what they need, what they're capable of, and what they can become—than the last three years I've spent fostering them.

Forty-plus dogs. Mostly hunting breeds. Mostly animals who had spent their entire lives working outside: beagles, Portuguese Podengos, coonhounds, and others bred specifically for hunting. Dogs who had never seen a staircase, heard a dishwasher, or understood that couches exist. Dogs who arrived at my door terrified of the sound a refrigerator makes, overwhelmed by the smell of carpet, and utterly bewildered by the concept of a dog bed and squeaky toys.

Every single one of them became adoptable. Most of them became extraordinary. 

This article demonstrates why fostering works, what the science says, what consumers believe (and misbelieve) about shelter versus fostered dogs, and why the single most powerful thing any animal lover can do right now, with the shelters full and adoptions declining, is open their home for a few weeks.

The Crisis No One Is Talking About Loudly Enough

Before we get to the good news, let's discuss what's currently happening.

In 2025, approximately 5.8 million dogs and cats entered U.S. animal shelters and rescues. For the fifth consecutive year, intake has outpaced adoption, indicating the shelter population is growing rather than shrinking. Large dogs now wait a median of 20 days to be adopted, nearly double the 11 days recorded in 2019. In 2025, approximately 320,000 dogs were euthanized, not because they were dangerous, but because the system ran out of space, time, and human hours.

This is the backdrop. Against that backdrop, there is an intervention that works, and it’s backed by peer-reviewed research, real-world data, and 40 dogs' worth of personal proof.

That intervention is foster care.

What the Research Actually Shows

I'm a data person, so let's start with the numbers. 

A landmark study cited widely in shelter medicine found that dogs who spent even a short amount of time in a foster home were 14.3 times more likely to be adopted than dogs that remained in the shelter without intervention. That is not a rounding error. That is a category-defining outcome differential.

Brief outings, just a few hours in someone's home, increased adoption likelihood by five times over dogs with no intervention at all. Fostered dogs also had lower return rates after adoption. This is because the foster caregiver could provide potential adopters with real, accurate, home-environment information about the dog's temperament, quirks, and needs. This is the kind of information you cannot get from a kennel card.

A comprehensive review of the literature concluded that fostering provides "both proximate, physiological and behavioral, and distal, length of stay and adoption outcomes, welfare benefits for shelter animals as well as their caregivers. 

Numbers from the Kansas City Pet Project, one of six shelters in a Maddie's Fund study, showed that dogs placed in foster care improved in 17 of 21 behavioral measures  (including confidence, friendliness toward people, attention-seeking, and reduced fear) within a single week.

The Sound of a Shelter vs. The Sound of a Home

Here is something I understand deeply, and that took my first foster dog to fully teach me: Shelters are loud in ways that damage animals.

Peer-reviewed research documents animal shelters regularly reach sound levels of 100 decibels or more (the equivalent of a chainsaw or a jackhammer) throughout the day. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's guidelines for people indicate that exposure to 100 decibels should be limited to no more than two hours per day. Shelter dogs live in that noise 24/7.

In shelter dogs, the primary stress hormone cortisol rises to nearly three times the level measured in pet dogs living in homes, and it stays elevated for days upon shelter entry. A study measuring cortisol levels in dogs' hair, a way of tracking chronic, long-term stress, found that after six weeks in a shelter, cortisol had increased by one-third and only began declining six weeks after adoption.

What's happening in a shelter kennel is measurable physiological suffering.

Now consider what happens in a home. The dishwasher hums. A car honks outside. A child laughs. The TV murmurs in another room. The refrigerator clicks on. A lawnmower passes by. To a dog who has spent its life in an outdoor kennel or in a shelter, some of these sounds are genuinely foreign and can be startling. Some dogs flinch at the sound of a pot lid being dropped. Some go into a panic at a vacuum cleaner or the TV being turned on.

But here is the biggest gift of the foster home: exposure, in a safe environment, with someone present who can reassure, redirect, and allow the dog to process at its own pace. A dog cannot learn that a dishwasher is harmless while living in a kennel surrounded by barking. It can only learn that while in a kitchen with a calm human nearby.

By the time my foster dogs leave my house, they know what a television sounds like, what a doorbell means, how stairs work, what to do when someone knocks, how to ask to go outside, and how to sleep through the night somewhere other than outdoors under the stars. These are not small things. These are the skills that make a dog adoptable.

The Hunting Dog Problem Nobody Talks About

I want to speak specifically about the population I know best: hunting dogs.

Hunting breeds represent a significant portion of shelter intakes in many parts of the country, particularly in rural and semi-rural communities. They arrive at shelters in waves: after hunting season ends, health issues prevent them from working, a change in an owner's life makes keeping a working dog untenable, or they are simply no longer wanted.

These dogs are magnificent. They are often highly intelligent, deeply motivated, naturally athletic, and, when given half a chance, extraordinarily loyal companions. They are also, in many cases, completely unprepared for domestic life.

A dog that has lived outside in a kennel run or on a 5-foot chain for years has never navigated a hallway, had a house rule, slept indoors, encountered a cat, or been leash-walked in an urban or suburban environment. In a shelter, this dog looks like a problem. It may pace in its kennel. It may bark incessantly at the unfamiliar sights and sounds pouring in around it. It may be labeled anxious, reactive, or even aggressive, which can dramatically reduce adoptability.

In a home, with structure, patience, and consistent guidance, that same dog reveals what it actually is: a highly trainable, bonded, affectionate animal who wanted nothing more than someone to show it the rules and offer it safety and love.

I have watched this transformation more than 40 times in the last three years alone. It never gets old.

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About the Author

Lee Ann Hagerty is Director of Customer Enrichment and Consumer Insights on the BSM Product Innovation team with 29+ years in the pet food industry, working for Iams/Eukanuba, Procter & Gamble, and Mars Pet Care. She brings a unique combination of project management skills with consumer insights, product design, animal nutrition, and sensory science which drives an in-depth understanding of the pet and consumer. Lee Ann has a passion for helping dogs. Over the last year and a half, she has fostered over 22 dogs. Many of them were senior dogs who had lived their entire lives outside as hunting dogs. She has been a foster pet parent for many years, and it brings her great joy to see these pets find fur-ever homes where they live with families indoors with love and care.