Community
21 September, 2023
Make a jilted dog’s day
WITH the support of SavourLife, Cairns-based charity North Queensland Animal Rescue (NQAR) is holding the first foster carer training and recruitment day this weekend to encourage more people in the community to save a dog’s life by foster caring.
NQAR, which assists with rehoming dogs across the Far North, is holding the free event on Sunday (September 24), at the Cairns Showground from 9am to 2pm to provide carers and people interested in becoming carers, with basic training, skills, and knowledge on foster caring.
“We recognise that there’s many dogs that get put to sleep to no fault of their own simply because they haven’t been able to go into foster care or find a place in a shelter,” said NQAR president Sandra Downing.
“We are constantly looking to boost our foster carer numbers because the more we have the more dogs we can save. We received funding through dog food company SavourLife to run a training day for our current foster carers and people who are interested in becoming one.
“They can book through the president@nqar.org.au email or they can simply pop up and meet the team.”
With NQAR re-homing 350 dogs annually and having 30 to 50 dogs at any given time with foster carers, Ms Downing said the event was crucial in saving surrendered dogs’ lives.
“We don’t have a shelter, so all of our dogs are staying at foster carers’ homes, so we need carers,” she said.
“The free training will be run by Cairns Canine Training School and they will teach you how to introduce a foster dog into your home, setting boundaries, basic training, lead walking, crate training and more to set up dogs for successful rehoming. We’ll have current foster dogs to assist with the training.
“Foster caring it’s incredibly rewarding, it saves dogs’ lives.”
Ms Downing said that NQAR was very supportive of its carers, covering vet bills and medicine costs, supplying leads and crates and focusing on minimising carers’ costs.
