 Hello, my name is Victoria Riles and I am the Animal Services Superintendent for the City of Columbia. I want to thank you for tuning in today as we highlight some of our programs here at Columbia Animal Services and introduce a few of our life-saving team members. We hope you enjoy this short segment and find out how you too can be a part of life-saving. Our foster program has three main components to it. Foster to adopt, adoption ambassador, and general fostering. Foster to adopt is where somebody can take home a dog before finalizing the decision on adoption and test trial the dog in their household for up to two weeks. Adoption ambassador is where a person can come down to our shelter, pick an eligible for the program dog, and take them into their house for up to 60 days. During this time they are expected to promote the dog for adoption. At the end of the 60 days the dog does have to be returned to the shelter but at the time of the return, foster parents are expected to fill out a doggie questionnaire where we can better understand the dog's personality and find out what you learned about the dog. This helps the dog get quickly adopted and better paired with its forever family. General fostering is for two young, two old, sick, or specific medical cases. These terms can range between two weeks to four weeks, maybe four months. We do have a lot of kittens that are very young under vaccinated and otherwise fairly healthy that need foster homes to safely stay out of the shelter and be put at a slower risk of illness. Things like the medicals may require a lot longer terms as they could be from an ion nucleation or an amputation. Since the establishment of the foster program in 2017, over 6,000 animals have benefited from this program. Being a foster parent is as simple as filling out an online application, going through orientation, and then being paired with your first foster. Once you have been paired with your foster coordinator or myself, we'll set up bi-weekly check-ins with you for if you're for general fostering for vaccines, if you are doing a foster to adopt at the end of your two-week term to see how things are going, if you're doing adoption ambassador we're going to check in about once every month to remind you when your dog is due for their preventatives and to see how the adoption process is going. The foster program is not only important because it is a life-saving program but it also promotes community engagement. We want to thank all of our committed foster parents for partaking in this life-saving effort and encouraging those in the community who are interested in this program to reach out. If you want to check the links down below, we will happy to get you started on your fostering journey. Thank you again for tuning in and learning what we're doing over here at Columbia Animal Services. We'd love to have you be a part of any of our programs, whether it be foster, volunteer, rescue, or engagement on a daily basis. Please reach out to us via our social media platforms on Facebook, Columbia Animal Services, and Instagram, Columbia Animal Services, to find out what's going on and how you can be a part of the fun.