We're always looking for foster homes for some of our chinchillas (and guinea pigs, rabbits, etc)!  We use fosters for both our senior and our less-socialized chinchillas / animals.  These particular animals could greatly benefit from the love and attention they would receive during one-on-one care in a foster home.  We provide the chinchilla (or other animal), cage, and supplies, and you provide the love, care, socialization, and cleaning! 

We've had a lot of people asking about this lately, so, here's what this involves....

What do we provide?

• Cage (if available)

• Pellets / hay

• Chew toys

• Bedding

• Treats

• Dust / dust pan

• Food bowl

• Water bottle

• Hammock

What do you provide?

• Weekly cage cleaning

• Feeding / watering

• Making sure chinchilla has sufficient chew toys / replacements (provided by rescue)

• Handling / socialization

• TLC

• weekly pictures and occasional description updates for animal's listing

How long do you provide the above supplies? During the time you are fostering the chinchilla, we continue to provide supplies. However, we will not ship or deliver these supplies, so we recommend that when you come to pick up your chinchilla and supplies for fostering, you make sure to take enough for awhile.

What if I don't have a cage? If you do not have your own cage for fostering a chinchilla, the cages we are typically able to lend out are guinea-pig-type cages. Obviously, we'd like our adoptive homes to keep their chins in a bit more of a taller, more exciting cage, but those cages are not always available. We may or may not have cages to lend out, depending on circumstances here at the rescue, so you may have to wait for a cage to become available. If you do have a cage of your own, you may be able to foster sooner!

How long will I foster? As long as you want! Preferably we ask that you foster for at least a few months, so that you don't take a chin to foster and return it the following week, but you can foster for any length of time. If you take home a foster and decide it's not for you, you can bring it back to the rescue. Ideally, we'd like people to foster until the chinchilla gets adopted, to prevent the chinchillas from being shuffled around from home to home.

Which chinchillas can I foster? We are currently fostering out our adults and senior chinchillas. If you are experienced in chinchillas, we likely have some difficult-to-adopt chinchillas that you might be interested in fostering. If not, that's fine, we have plenty of adults / seniors that are looking for a nice foster home which would be fine for beginners / the average chinchilla owner. Adults are chinchillas that are 1+ years of age. Sorry, but the younger chinchillas are adopted so quickly, that they are not available for fostering.

What happens when my foster chinchilla gets adopted? How does that work? There are two options for adoption of a foster chinchilla. The first option is that the foster home handles the adoption themselves, at their home (under the guidance of the rescue, of course). The adoptive home would be approved by the rescue, and the foster home would simply handle the last few pieces of paperwork and handing over the chinchilla to its new home. The second option is that the adoption would happen at the rescue, and the foster home would bring the chinchilla to the rescue, where the three parties (rescue, foster, and adopter) would meet, for the adoption to occur. It is often easier to schedule the first option, but we will work with everyone to make either option work, depending on what the foster home is comfortable with.

What if I want to adopt my foster chinchilla? You can! We've had several foster failures who can tell you that it does happen -- people do fall in love with their foster chinchilla! If you decide you want to adopt, you will just need to fill out an adoption form for your chinchilla, get it approved, and then you can adopt!

What paperwork do I need to sign to get this started? When you come to pick up your foster chinchilla and supplies, you will sign a contract (see link below) which states that you're fostering a chinchilla for the rescue, borrowing supplies, that you understand what this entails, and that you will return the chinchilla / supplies to the rescue if / when requested. Nothing overly complicated!

What if I want to foster a different animal (not a chinchilla)? Let us know! Right now, we have someone who fosters rabbits, and if you'd like to foster specific animals, feel free to let us know! We can always use people to foster guinea pigs and other small animals as well -- just let us know what you are interested in fostering, and we'll be happy to let you know when we have one to foster!

If all this sounds good to you, and you'd like to foster, feel free to contact us and we'll get you started!