While working and studying from home, Chad Phillips (DDS 2021), his girlfriend and his roommate decided to become a foster home for the KC Pet Project. They have helped one dog, Bingo, find a forever home and are hoping to do the same for their current foster pet, Nella Bean.
“My girlfriend researches for a biotech company called Likarda, which works really closely with KC Pet Project,” said Phillips. “Likarda’s president sent out an email in March to the team mentioning how KCPP was in need of emergency fosters. We decided this was the perfect way to help the community during our ‘down time’ from school.”
Phillips and his girlfriend both had family dogs growing up and had been doing quite a bit of pet-sitting in the past year, so they were happy to take in Bingo, who was adopted by two UMKC undergraduates.
“The KC Pet Project was working really hard to put all of their shelter pets into foster homes, with the goal of minimizing traffic and workers at the facility,” Phillips said. “Bingo found his forever home after only about a week. It felt great to find him a home so quickly, especially considering he was scheduled to be euthanized at another shelter just days before we got him. It was very hard to say goodbye to him. He was definitely almost a foster-fail!”
The KC Pet Project was able to place all of its adoptable pets into foster homes early in the area’s stay-at-home weeks, something that had never happened before. However, the initial demand for adoptions has slowed somewhat, and the shelter now has more pets to place.
To help with that effort, the three of them now have a second foster dog, Nella Bean, and they’re hoping she can find a home soon. Her profile is here.
“Since we are both busy with graduate school, we have just wanted to live vicariously through other pet owners and through fostering until we feel we are ready to have one ourselves,” Phillips said. “All three of us are moving to new places in June, so we are trying to either get Nella Bean adopted or find her a new foster home by then. Because of the moves and life getting busy again, we will not be taking in another foster, but we will likely do it again in the future and highly recommend it to anyone else!”
Anyone interested in adopting Nella Bean or serving as a new foster home for her can email the KC Pet Project at foster@kcpetproject.org. And more pets available through the project are here.