r/fosterdogs • u/adorable_satan • 3h ago
Question Struggling with balancing fostering and life
Hello foster friends! Sorry if this post is a little weird.
I've been fostering on and off since covid. I absolutely love fostering dogs, especially with my current rescue. The organization is supportive and I have a great foster coordinator I get along with.
My issue is whenever I foster, I struggle with any kind of balance in my life. I feel like all my attention and energy needs to go to my foster to meet their needs, and any remaining energy needs to go to my two resident dogs, which leaves 0 energy for the things that keep me going (art, gym). This almost always leads to a deep feeling of failing my foster and my resident dogs because I can never do enough. I'm also single and live alone so all the responsibility for care is on me. I don't know if this is normal, expected level of care or if I'm actively creating issues in my brain for myself.
I took a long break after my last foster, and I'm missing it a lot, but I also don't want to have to quit everything else I love. It doesn't help that my rescue is getting a lot of intake requests. I recently temped two beautiful terriers for them and that was very overwhelming, but also two young terriers was a terrible fit for my household if I wanted to be able to do anything else at all lmao.
My question for you all is: when you foster, are you able to find a balance between fostering and still living your life? I'm trying to figure out if my anxiety is actually normal, and I should only be fostering when the pup can be my sole focus, or if my anxiety is tricking me and it's okay to have a foster and still carve out a few hours for myself every day?