(cheerful music) - Utah Animal Advocacy Foundation creates matches between pets and their forever families while promoting responsible pet ownership.

Deb Willes is here with Murphy to share more.

Thank you so much for being here, Deb.

- Oh, thanks for having us.

- And tell me a little bit about Murphy.

- Murphy started out as a foster with our group.

She came from the shelter with her brother.

And then she was in our foster program for a while, had a couple of surgeries to clean up some health issues, and then was adopted.

- Now that's something that people are often concerned about when they think of adopting a pet from a shelter is, will there be huge medical bills or things that they have to face like that?

How do you guys work with people to help, you know, provide the healthiest pets going out the door?

- Oh, we do all kinds of medical screenings.

We do our best to make sure that they get a healthy pet when they leave from us.

So they're vaccinated, they're spayed and neutered, they are microchipped.

If there are surgeries that are needed, or dental cleanings, or anything, we take care of it before.

So when the pet leaves our care and goes into their new family, they have a clean bill of health at that point.

- And one thing that is also different is they're housed in families that are fostering them, right?

- Yes, yes.

We only have foster homes with UAAF.

So all of our pets live with families with kids and other pets and everything, and we get to know their personalities, and then they come to adoptions, and we can tell you a lot more about the animal that way.

- What kind of a difference does that make for not only your organization, but for pets like Murphy?

- The foster program really is a wealth of information.

We can tell them a lot of information about behaviors, and with not having a brick-and-mortar because we're only foster homes, we don't have the overhead that some groups might have.

So all of our money goes straight to the animals themselves and their care.

- Is it difficult to become a foster home or a foster family?

- No, there are requirements that we need.

You know, we need to do a home inspection and some things.

But all of those questions can be answered through the form on our website.

- All right.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

And thank you, Murphy, for being an awesome guest as well.

If you'd like to learn more information, you can head to the website that is on your screen.

That's uaaf.org for the Utah Animal Advocacy Foundation.

I'm Liz Adeola.

Thank you so much for watching "Contact."

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