New partnership helps people seeking addiction treatment find pet care
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The average residential addiction treatment program can take 30 to 90 days. For people with pets, the inability to find a temporary home for their dogs or cats could be a barrier to getting help. A local animal rescue organization is helping people find a foster parent for their pet so they can be reunited after treatment.
The Bond Between’s respite foster program has been around since 2024 and offers up to 90 days of free temporary foster care for people going through tough life circumstances such as domestic violence or addiction treatment. They recently partnered with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, an addiction treatment center, to help people seeking addiction treatment find pet care.
The Bond Between executive director and founder Rachel Mairose said the most important thing is keeping families together.
“I just think there's so many people out there that love their pets, and they are in a critical situation, and a lot of the reason they keep going is because they have the pets. And in those situations, the worst thing we can do is ask them to give up a family member,” Mairose said.
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Mairose’s first respite foster case was with an unhoused man who lived in his car with his Boston Terrier. She said the dog gave birth to puppies in his car during the winter, and he didn’t know what to do.
“I ended up taking her whole family and raising them, and then she and him were reunited, and that reunification was like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I mean, she was crying in her little Boston Terrier way, and he was sobbing,” Mairose said. “Because I was able to provide that 60 days of care to raise her puppies, he was able to work overtime, wasn't worried about getting back to his car to take care of her secured housing.”
Mairose said the man now has a fiancé, a house and six pets.
New partnership
Hazelden will now list the Bond Between and the respite foster program as a resource. Hazelden’s staff will be trained to give out contact information for the Bond Between when a potential patient or a current patient cites pet care as a barrier to either entering or continuing treatment.
“I'm anticipating that now that the word is out, people who hadn't even thought about going to treatment because of a pet care situation now will see this as an opportunity that they could do that, and we'll be seeing a lot more of the folks who need it as well,” Hazelden executive director Lydia Burr said.
Burr said some people opt for outpatient treatment instead of residential treatment because of their pets, even though outpatient treatment is sometimes a lower level of care than what they need.
“Oftentimes, pet care is what gets people out of bed in the morning,” she said. “Addiction, substance use disorder, mental health concerns — these are issues, they’re diseases and diagnoses that really breed in isolation. So sometimes, all they have left is their pets, and that's what's getting them out of bed in the morning. That's what's getting them going during the day, that's their reason for continuing.”
Twenty percent of the Bond Between’s respite clients are working through treatment somewhere in the Twin Cities metro area, the organization’s vice president of community engagement Carrie Openshaw said. Last year, they had about 110 respite animals in their care with a 95 percent reclamation rate.
Taking care of an average foster pet can cost about $500 between vet care and supplies, Openshaw said.
“Pets are well cared for in our program, and we provide all the food and supplies too, so pet owners shouldn't have to worry about anything. And, hopefully, we're returning pets to them in better shape than they came into us. Because we're trying to catch up on any vetting that might have been missed while they were going through whatever they're going through,” she said.
One of the respite pets is Stella, a 1-year-old French bulldog who’s wearing a pink diaper because she was recently spayed. Leia Simon, a marketing manager at the Bond Between, has fostered her for the last month and a half.
“I just saw her sitting in her little cage, and I'm like, ‘You can't sit in there, you're too tiny.’ So I brought her home,” Simon said. “She has been delightful ... She's been a delightful little addition to our home.”
Stella’s nickname in the office is “snorty potato” because Simon can tell where she is from her snorting. Before working for the Bond Between, Simon fostered pets for them as a volunteer for the last 10 years. But Stella is her first respite foster.
“It's not just for me; it's for others, and that's the point,” she said. “If it's giving an animal its last loving home, or it's giving an animal a place to go so its owner can take care of themselves, all those things feel really good to me personally.”
The Bond Between said their goal is to hit double the number of respite animals they foster, which would bring them to 200 cases within the next year.
