Foster Dog Mom Offers Haven For Rescues

Baywater Animal Rescue wouldn’t be the same without one of their most devoted foster heroes, Shelby Scrivani. Whether helping shy pups come out of their shells or offering senior dogs a cozy place to rest, Scrivani has opened her heart and home to those who need that extra bit of care before finding their forever families. Her compassion and consistency have given dozens of animals the chance to decompress, heal, and discover trust.

In this interview, Scrivani, a government geographer who works from home, shares what fostering means to her—and how a little love can change a dog’s life.

Why did you decide to do fostering in the first place?

Well, we started in, like, 2021, I think. I used to work in an office, but, when Covid happened, they sent us home, and they told us that we wouldn’t need to come back, that we were gonna work from home, sort of indefinitely. And so everything sort of changed—like, what my schedule was—pretty quickly.

And so I think on Facebook, I started to see posts from Baywater, and they had this program that was, like—I don’t know what they officially call it, but it’s like, “check a dog out for a weekend” type program. And so I started just doing that at first. Our first foster—I knew nothing about anything back then.

Did you have any pets at the time?

We had one dog at the time. His name’s Chunk. We still have him. And I thought it was a good way to. . . so, when our dog was a puppy, he was bitten by another dog.

When we were out on a walk, a dog just sort of came out of nowhere and bit him. And he didn’t get a lot of socialization because of COVID, too. So, I was hoping it would be a good way for him to get some interaction with other dogs, to get some social ability and some exercise, with the quarantine going on and everything.

And so we just started doing that, and it really grew from there. So our first foster, his name was Party. He was very aptly named. He was all over the place, crazy excited. And so we only checked him out for a weekend. And it was kind of heartbreaking to have to even take him back at the end of the weekend. It was already not enough. Even our first time, it was . . .

It was to give him a break from the shelter.

Yeah. So that’s what the program’s supposed to be. Because there’s a lot of research that even a day out of the shelter is good for dogs. And so we did it for a weekend, and very quickly, I was already talking to my husband about, “well, I really want to do more. Would you be opposed to us doing more? And keeping a dog for longer.” And he, of course, was totally fine with it.

And so it grew from there and we started keeping a dog longer and just bringing them back for a meet and greet or if they had someone who was interested in them. But my husband’s kind of a bleeding heart, so I think we fostered probably maybe four dogs our first go round back then, before my husband absolutely fell in love with a dog and we ended up keeping him. His name’s Winston and we still have him, but now he’s four.

But so we took a little bit of a break after that. But very quickly, following them on Facebook and everything, I just kind of wanted to jump back into it. So this last go round, we really started back up and haven’t really stopped. We started back up, I think I want to say, in 2023. I just really love it. I think it’s been really great for my older daughter. Well, for both my daughters, but especially for my older daughter. She’s 13.

So we go walk dogs a lot at Baywater and then we’re such a big part of everything there that I’m usually just like, “Hey, does this dog have any applications? They have any meet and greets coming up? Or is it okay if we take them home for a bit?” And they’re usually just like, yeah, it’s fine. And so that’s usually how it goes. And sometimes we’ll just take a dog back for a meet and greet, they get adopted, and we just go back and get another one.

And you’ve had 40-some fosters?

Yeah, 41 so far. I keep a list of them. I just recently started this, but I try to do a video at the end of the year of all the fosters that we’ve had for that year. And so I had to count them out when she was asking me for the newsletter. But yeah, 41 is the most recent number.

What’s your process with the dogs?

Well, we have quite a few social factors. Like, I have a toddler, we have four cats, and we have two dogs. And I have a teenager and a husband, obviously. So there’s a lot of things that we have to ask Baywater about first before even bringing a dog home. So we’ll usually walk a dog a couple times and [it] seems like they’re maybe gonna be a good fit for us. So then I’ll ask, have they been cat tested yet, for example? And if not, they have like the whole cat house over there, and we’ll go cat test them.

And if that seems to go well, then we’ll take them home. It starts off as just like a shutdown period, if that makes sense. So, giving them some quiet time to just acclimate and sort of adjust from the loud space of the shelter to having some quiet space by yourself. With us, but without our other dogs. So we usually do like “crate and rotate” for, depending on the dog, a couple days. If it’s a more extreme case where a dog’s really fearful, we might do a bit longer. But a lot of times with puppies and things like that, they’re pretty sociable already.

So we just try to read the dog and see how they’re reacting to our home. And so we’ll have some time out with them by themselves with our family. We’ll do a pretty slow introduction with my toddler to make sure that that’s gonna be okay. Lots of reassuring with my toddler to take it slow, be gentle, things like that. And then after, a couple days—the longest is probably like a week—we’ll introduce them to our dogs. So we will take one out at a time into our yard, and then they’ll both be on leashes and see how they interact. Most locations, we’ve done sort of like parallel walking down the street where our dog will be on a leash on one side of the street and the other dog will be on a leash on the other side of the street.

And we just try to take it really slow to make sure that they’re comfortable. And same with the cats. Our cats are, you know, they’re pretty agile. So it’s pretty obvious quickly if they’re not gonna be a good fit with cats. And we’ve had a couple dogs before where they might be nervous at the shelter and it’ll seem like they’re okay with cats, but then as they get more comfortable in a home, they also get more comfortable with their personality, really comes out. But for the most part, we just try to do slow interjections with all of our social factors to make sure it’s gonna be okay.

What happens after that?

Once that happens, it’s really just about making the dog as comfortable as possible and then slowly introducing them to other social factors. We don’t usually take a dog to Petsmart or something in the first week or two that we have them or some big social event. We try to take things slow and make sure they’re going to be comfortable and things like that. I think the process is mostly just about making sure at every step that the dog is comfortable and not fearful. Because some dogs, we’ll get them and—I mean, gosh, we’ve had dogs that have never seen a TV, have never seen a ceiling fan before. So we’ll have dogs that are barking at the ceiling fan going, or they’ll bark at the TV.

And so, just getting them used to one thing at a time instead of throwing too much. It’s just great to see a dog sort of come out of their shell and develop. We’ve had dogs that are really fearful at the start, and then they just get more and more comfortable and just a great thing to experience. I just love it.

What’s your daughters’ part in fostering? What do they do?

Well, my older daughter, she’s really involved in the process. Like I said, she walks dogs with me all the time at Baywater, so sometimes she has really strong opinions about which dog she wants to foster next. And my younger daughter, she’s three, so we’ve been doing this sort of like her whole life at this point. So it’s like old hat for her to see a dog, know we’re just fostering it, and say goodbye to the dog when it goes to their home.

My older daughter, she’ll take the dogs outside. She spends a lot of time with them. Some of the dogs she’ll get really attached to, especially the puppies, so she’ll spend a lot of time with them, and sometimes they’ll even end up in her room with her and stuff like that. But she does great with them. She just loves it, but I think it really teaches her. I think it really helps them to learn empathy and compassion, and it’s just been great. Even responsibility has been great for her. I don’t usually let them walk dogs by themselves or anything, like new dogs. But we have a fenced-in yard and she loves to go play with them outside.

What’s the longest you’ve had a foster?

So our longest foster was a dog named Rodney, and he was like a hound mix and he was such a sweet dog. There’s no predictability for how long we will have a dog. I have no idea what makes a dog be a long foster or short foster, totally unpredictable. But he was the sweetest dog, and he had a cataract in one eye. So he was blind in one eye. But he just was such a sweetheart, and we had him for I think three and a half months. So, it’s not like we’ve ever had a foster for like a year or something like that.

But, he ended up getting adopted by a girl in town. Well, an adult woman in town. I don’t know why I said a girl, but Rodney was just the sweetest, most gentle hound you could ever imagine. And we see her sometimes at the Baywater events. She’ll bring him back and he’s very happy. But he was one of the first fosters that we had after taking a break this go round and we had him through Thanksgiving and Christmas. They found him as a stray. I think he was from Georgia maybe, but like a southern shelter, and he had come up from the south, and they found him as a stray. So I’m sure it was the first time he’d ever spent a holiday with a family.

Is it hard to say goodbye to them?

It is, yeah. It’s bittersweet. But I’m usually like the tough one in our family. My older daughter has had a couple fosters that she’s really fallen in love with. And like I said, my husband’s a bleeding heart, so he would probably adopt every single dog we ever [fostered]. We’d have 40 dogs. But every dog has its own great qualities. So it’s bittersweet to say goodbye to each of them.

But it’s so heartwarming to me to be able to fit them with a great family and be able to be that transition for them.

I love being able to see a dog go from having that tough shelter environment. Even the best shelters are a tough environment for dogs. So being able to see them go from fearful or nervous to just their whole personality coming out and shining and being able to give that information back to the shelter so that they can find a good home for them is my favorite part about it. And so if we adopted another dog, I always have to tell my family we wouldn’t be able to do this part, and that, I mean, it’s just so wonderful. I can’t imagine.

So we had our one foster fail, but I have to be really strong with them sometimes to be like, “We wouldn’t be able to foster if we adopted another dog, you know, or if we adopted every dog.” So it is tough. And I mean, it’s always tough because every dog is great. Every dog we’ve had has been great. But then we get to have our next foster and do it all over again. So that’s pretty special.

What does fostering do for you personally?

Well, it’s really fulfilling. So, like I said, just being able to be a part of that and having that close relationship with the shelter for them to be able to call me. And sometimes it’s us going and saying, “Hey, can we take this dog home?” And they’ll say, sure. But sometimes they’ll have a tough case. And being able to have them be able to call me and be like, “Hey, this dog is just really terrified in the shelter. Do you think you could take them on?” And us being like, sure, and being able to be that for the shelter has been really great.

So I just love how great it makes me feel, and I love what it does for my family and my kids and how it kind of brings us together around this, like, central purpose, I guess.

If you are interested in fostering, visit www.baywateranimalrescue.org or call 410-228-3090.