Families Invite Shelter Dogs Over for Thanksgiving Dinner, Thanks to Virginia Shelter Facebook Post

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For the approximately 3.3 million dogs taken in by animal shelters in the United States every year, leftover Thanksgiving turkey dinner is something they'll probably have to do without. Such are the drawbacks of not having a human family and a loving home.

Several shelters across the country have started to address the problem with a creative solution that benefits everybody, whether human or canine. Christie Chipps Peters, the director at the Richmond Animal Control and Care Center in Virginia, told The Dodo how the idea came to her one day.

“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if people could invite them over for Thanksgiving dinner?’” she said.

Peters’s idea was to get people in the community to think “about the dogs being alone in the shelter for Thanksgiving.” In a Facebook post, RACC asked people to pick up an animal a couple of days before Thanksgiving and foster them until the first week of December. “We will provide all the supplies-you provide the love (and maybe a ham biscuit from dinner),” they wrote.

To Peters’s surprise and delight, the response was terrific. The RACC’s call for turkey-day foster families led to 35 animals getting to spend the holiday in a warm, loving home atmosphere. Not only did dogs make the most of their chance to curl up near the dinner table, the shelter also allowed some cats to get in on the bargain.

This was back in 2016. Now, the program is in its fourth year, and it’s still going strong. One of the best outcomes has been how many “foster failures” took place after the week spent together—in other words, the pets ended up staying for good!

That had been part of Peters’s plan all along.

“My foster failures from last year! Best decision I made!” wrote one of the participants.

“Soon as I bought her (on the right) home last year she was attached to all of us ... she had to stay in this family,” commented another.

“It’s a fun twist to a traditional fostering situation for people who might’ve never done it before,” Peters told The Dodo. “We try to make it really easy for people to say yes and keep that pet forever.”

Other shelters around the country have initiated similar programs, including the Lifelong Animal Project in Atlanta’s “Home for the Pawlidays,” which introduces some very “special guests” into people’s homes. “We are providing the food, pet supplies and support, and participants will provide the love,” LAP spokesperson Karen Hirsch told TODAY.

It is the hope of many shelters to make space for new animals and prevent as many euthanasia cases as possible. Even when the animals aren’t adopted, time out of the shelter is crucial to their well-being and also helps rehabilitation.

Dr. Sheila D'Arpino of Maddie’s Fund, an organization that promotes no-kill practices in U.S. shelters, notes that many animals actually develop psychological or behavioral issues from stressful, long stretches of confinement. Taking in an animal for the holidays “gives them a much-needed break from the shelter,” she told Today. “Think of it as like the weekend to our stressful work weeks.”

For the Humane Society of Delaware County in Ohio, their #FalalaFoster program also proved tremendously helpful in facilitating the adoption process, even when the fosterers themselves didn’t adopt.

“Seeing pictures of an animal in a house help people picture them in their own home when considering adoption,” Natalie Yeager from HSDC said, per Maddie’s Fund. “It also gives us more information about how the dog acts in a home, involves the community and may even attract new foster homes. It’s so worth it!”