Foster Dogs Are Always Going Viral on Social Media. I Know the Truth Behind Those Sad Posts.

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More than 8.4 million people have watched a TikTok of my first-ever foster dog, Bob, and me.

The video was posted the day after Bob and I attended an adoption event held by Badass Animal Rescue, the organization that, four months earlier, had transported Bob to Brooklyn from a Georgia shelter. Throughout the event, potential adopters gravitated toward Bob, but he wanted nothing to do with them. Whenever a stranger gingerly held out a hand for a sniff, he recoiled.

Just before we left, an artist at the event asked if she could post a video of us on her TikTok. I agreed, thinking little of it as Bob and I headed back to the subway. I discovered the TikTok had gone viral the next morning. “POV: you are at an adoption event and all the adoptable dogs are getting attention except for …” the video reads as the camera pans before landing on Bob and me. “BOB. Please someone get him a forever home!”

I scrolled to the comments, already ware. Hundreds commented that they wanted Bob, that they lived in other states, but that they'd travel to adopt Bob. Then the media started to pick up on it. “Heartbreaking video shows 10 lb, three-year-old dog 'Bob' that NO ONE wants,” read the Daily Mail. “Pup no one wanted goes viral in 'heartbreaking' video: 'I'd die for Bob,' ” read the New York Post.

Some dog rescues try to court this type of advertising; Badass names their pups after celebrities in the hopes the celebrity will reshare pleas for fosters, for example, and partners with pet influencers like the Dogist. In the span of a few days, Bob became as famous as it is possible for a dog who isn't in an Oscar-nominated movie to get. I spent hours combing through the coverage and the comments from folks who said they wanted to adopt Bob. How many of them, I wondered, would spend a day with him—the real dog, not the second-long clip—and give up?

My foster journey started soon after I joined TikTok in 2022. My feed was initially populated with generic cute dog videos; then came the abandoned dogs in shelters. But then: videos of dogs being rescued and forever grateful to their saviors. On a June afternoon, I googled “Brooklyn dog rescue looking for volunteers” and wound up on the Badass Animal Rescue website.

I'm hardly the first person to find her way to fostering through a well-tuned algorithm. Krista Almqvist, Badass Animal Rescue's executive director, estimates that about 65 percent of the organization's foster applications come through social media. Lauren Botticelli, executive director of the Animal Pad, puts that number closer to 80 percent for her San Diego–based rescue.

But balancing attracting potential fosters with being honest about the reality of fostering can be difficult for rescues to navigate. Social media videos of dogs in need of foster care tend to emphasize stories of neglect to pull on viewers' heartstrings and motivate them to act, without clearly explaining what that background means for a dog's needs.

Say a video starts with a scared dog who, seconds later, licks their rescuer's face. Potential fosters might not realize “that was at least a weeklong process of sitting and getting this dog to trust me,” Botticelli says.

Many organizations, including the Animal Pad and Badass Animal Rescue, attempt to educate potential fosters about this reality, but every dog ​​is different, and no rescue knows what each dog will need once in a home. Nor does every foster truly understand the emotional toll that meeting those needs may take. That's the situation I found myself in when I agreed to foster Bob.

Within seconds of entering my apartment, Bob immediately dove to the back of his crate. Throughout that first evening, I inched closer to Bob, willing him to understand that he was safe. He recoiled from me, and I couldn't blame him; he had no idea where he was or who I was.

But I was still upset. This was not the uncomplicated narrative of selflessly helping a grateful dog I had come to expect from social media. This process was clearly going to involve more than potty training—although that proved harder than I expected, too. Every time I pulled Bob from his crate and carried his shaking body outside, he refused to move. After 36 hours in our care, Bob still had not peed, pooped, eaten, or done much of anything beyond cower.

There's a “rule of threes” in the rescue community: Many dogs are completely shut down during the first three days in a new home and can take three weeks to settle in. During this time, it's normal for fosters or adopters to “want to give up,” especially if they've “romanticized” rescue after seeing a video on social media, Botticelli says.

I intellectually understood this rule, but living through it was another thing entirely. So I did the only thing I could do: I waited. After a few weeks that felt like an eternity, I started to see the first of many firsts. The first time Bob was in my presence. The first time he let me pet him. And the first time he walked outside. The night he finally dropped his hips and feet on grass, I was so relieved, I started to cry.

One month after entering my home, Bob was adopted. The next day, the frantic texts started to come in from the adopter. “Did Bob not pee when you first got him?” “Did Bob hide from you in his crate?” She continued to desperately text me a chronicle of my life weeks before. Then, 72 hours after she left our lobby: “I can't do this.”

Soon after, I walked into her apartment to take Bob back home with me. When he saw me, he scrambled over and jumped up on my legs. On the curb outside, Bob squatted and walked.

Three months and one heartworm treatment later, I carried Bob to the adoption event in Prospect Park. Then, he went viral, and direct messages from reporters and television producers who wanted to capitalize on Bob's new found fame started to roll in.

Each time I was interviewed, I was asked why Bob hadn't yet been adopted. I tried to convey that, actually, Bob had been adopted, but was more complicated to care for than his (still rapidly spreading) TikTok suggested. But the nuanced reality didn't neatly fit in a headline.

While one might assume a viral moment would lead directly to adoption, this often isn't the case. It wasn't for Bob—very few of Bob's 112 applicants were good matches for him—and it hasn't been for many other adoptable dogs who have gone viral. After a video of an amputee rescued by the Animal Pad went viral, the dog received hundreds of applications in hours, but “we didn't have a successful [match] out of any of them,” Botticelli says.

Another Badass Animal Rescue dog recently went viral after Today Show producers had a dog named for podcaster and actor Matt Rogers surprise the real Matt Rogers on air. The show has millions of viewers and an Instagram post of the two received over 16,000 likes, but as of mid-August, it had resulted in few applications. This is another typical outcome of an adoptable dog going viral; it's easy to like a post, but it doesn't always result in any action.