'Tails' from the Maybanks Rescue Squad
The first time Matt Maybanks and his wife, Ashley, fostered a dog through Tazewell Animal Protective Society (TAPS), it was considered a fail.
Why? Because the family ended up adopting her!
“A foster fail is when you bring a dog home to help foster them out for adoption, but you end up keeping the dog, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing!” Matt says. “Daphne, a 95-pound Lab/Pyrenees mix, had been at the shelter for about year. After I met her for the first time, there was no question that she was going to be a great way for us to try this whole fostering thing out. Now, here we are two years later, and Daphne is our resident ‘foster mom’ that helps teach the other dogs the ropes!”
Matt and Ashley decided to try fostering six months after their first dog, Oakley, had passed away. In January 2020, Ashley started volunteering at TAPS, Pekin’s no-kill shelter, and a couple months later, they decided they were ready to bring a foster dog home.
Today, the couple not only fosters dogs but also helps TAPS by posting adoptions online, helping with fundraisers, answering emails, sorting through adoption applications, and spending time with the dogs outside their kennels at the shelter.
“When we foster, our focus is typically on the larger breeds and ‘long term’ dogs – dogs that have been there for a while, and for one reason or another, don’t have many applications coming in,” Matt says. “Sometimes, it’s as simple as some bad pictures that don’t properly show the dog’s personality, and sometimes, it’s behavioral issues that are a bit more complicated.”
Once Matt and Ashley decide to take on a foster dog, they go meet the dog at the shelter and bring the dog home to meet their other dogs. If everyone gets along, the dog stays with the family until finding its forever home.
If the dog has behavioral challenges, Matt and Ashley will work on training and how to act in a home environment. They also promote the dog’s adoption as much as possible.
“As soon as we bring a foster home, we start taking pictures and promoting them on social media to help find them find a home. You would be surprised what a difference it makes just to have good pictures of these pups in a home rather than in the shelter,” Matt shares.
Once the couple starts receiving adoption applications, they’ll review them and schedule a meeting with potential candidates.
“If everything goes well, then we have done our job as foster parents, and the dog gets adopted!” Matt says.
Matt laughs as he recalls their first successful foster dog. The shelter had named him Archimedes, and he looked intimidating in his pictures. But the family was surprised at how sweet and trainable he actually was.
“We changed his name to Archie, took some good pictures, got him used to being in a home again, and less than two weeks later we had found him a home. But not before he escaped our backyard on the second day he was with us and about gave me a heart attack,” Matt remembers. “My mind raced as fast as my feet chasing him that day. All I could think was: They are never going to let us foster another dog if this dude gets out on the second day home!”
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case! Matt and Ashley have enjoyed this entire process and getting to know so many different dogs and their personalities.
The couple never considered fostering dogs until they got involved with TAPS and realized how significant the need is. They knew they couldn’t adopt all the dogs available, so fostering has been a great way to help as many as they can.
“It can be challenging but also rewarding when they find their forever home and you see the pictures of them living happily ever after,” Matt says. “I think this is important to us because we love our dogs, and we know how much they love us. We just want other people and other dogs to have the opportunity to feel the same way we do!”