This month, we are excited to be shining a light on Naira, one of our amazing foster parents! Naira always answers the call when our Foster team needs someone to care for a litter of puppies, a puppy undergoing intensive medical care, or even orphaned puppies. As a child growing up in the Soviet Union, Naira was familiar with caring for her family’s dogs, but fostering wasn’t as common.
“Amazingly, I learned about fostering only five or six years ago, and that’s after living in the United States for 40 years!” Naira says. “There was nothing of the kind in the Soviet Union. Of course, I knew about shelters but not fostering programs.”
Following the loss of her two beloved family dogs, Naira decided she wanted to apply her love for pets toward fostering those who needed it most. She says she approached Seattle Humane, who, from her perspective, “has an awesome reputation for its efficiency, professionalism, and for taking in and caring for all kinds of pets.”
Since then, Naira has cared for at least 20 dogs at all stages of their journeys home, whether overcoming an illness, nursing a litter of puppies, growing through all stages of puppyhood, or simply needing a safe and loving space where they could decompress. She’s loved them all, she says, and is always ready to fall in love again.
“Truly, any current foster pet or pets are my favorites,” she says, “and it doesn’t matter what breed or temperament they are, how they look, or whether they are healthy, sick or disabled. They are all stamped upon my heart and stay always in my prayers.”
Naira finds it incredibly rewarding to watch her foster dogs thriving under her care and eventually finding their way home to loving families. One foster dog that didn’t leave was Winnie, a 13-year-old husky/chow chow mix she fostered for eight months, and whom Naira would go on to adopt!
She says her nursing degree and lifetime living with dogs helped prepare her for fostering, but she also has relied heavily on Seattle Humane’s many training courses and other resources for foster parents. Naira is adamant that the learning never stops!
For anyone wanting to get involved in fostering, whether it be dogs, cats or small critters, Naira says it’s important to know what is needed and what you can handle. As someone who has fostered many puppies, she says people should also “be ready for a lot of unexpected events and ‘casualties,’ such as torn-up clothes, scratches on furniture, legs and arms, and chewed up shoes, unless you hide them.”
We are very thankful for foster parents like Naira, and our hearts go out to them and their well-chewed shoes. Click here if you are interested in fostering with Seattle Humane!
