Boone English teacher Hayley Welch has been continuously adding to her family since 2014 by fostering dogs through the Stray Animal Adoption Program (SAAP).

Welch’s family has six dogs of their own, and they have adopted 4 of their dogs from the SAAP and fostered around 80 more.

The SAAP website says the organization strives to find “forever homes” for dogs by fostering them “in homes where they are provided with love, food, medical care and socialization until adoption into a new loving home.”

Welch looked back and said that she remembers getting their families’ first foster dog, Rookie, a 12-year-old dachshund with no teeth, and he was adopted by another family after a week of having him. He was the first of many dogs Welch’s family has fostered.

Welch claims a dog named Snickers as her own since he is the oldest dog and she is the oldest sibling.

Welch and her family fell in love with Snickers, also called Pickles. Snickers had been thrown out of a car and abandoned in Kenton County.

Bailey, Welch’s third dog, was also thrown out of a car, but she was thrown out with a coyote trap on her leg.

After a month of her running with the trap through her leg, the SAAP helped and PetWow helped heal her leg, and that’s when Welch’s family became interested in fostering through SAAP.

Welch and her family typically look for older dogs to foster due to the busyness of their house, but this can make it more emotional, because they typically foster the dogs for longer before a family wants to adopt them.

“We form stronger bonds with them and then they leave,” Welch said.

One example involved a 13-year-old poodle mix who was in hospice care while the family fostered it.

The dog was very sick, but managed to live one and a half years longer than expected. Welch’s family threw a sweet 16 birthday party for the dog before it eventually passed from cancer and organ failure.

Another one of Welch’s dogs, Collete, was part of an animal hoarding case with 178 dogs in Laurel County in which a woman was “running an animal shelter.”

All of the dogs were caged, sick, malnourished, and had multiple signs of long-term abuse. Welch and her family took her as a medical case knowing she would need some socialization and nurturing.

Welch shared that although it is hard to see the dogs go, it is always nice to see that they found their forever home.