Did you know there’s a hotel in Mississippi that lets you foster dogs while you’re staying with them?

The Home2 Suites by Hilton, located in the Biloxi North/D’Iberville region of the state, is an extended-stay facility that has set out to cater to more than just their human guests. They also cater to the homeless pets of Mississippi who are still in search of their forever homes. How do they do that, you might ask? By allowing a diverse array of their furry friends to cuddle up next to the guests of Home2 Suites who opt to foster a dog during their extended stay.

The concept was to solve two problems at once.

People staying long periods of time at the hotel, often away from their families and loved ones, can get pretty lonesome during their visit. Of course, shelter dogs also get lonely, much more so than people, generally.

Home2 Suites decided to bridge that gap by implementing project Fostering Hope two years ago in 2018. The hotel partnered with Humane Society of South Mississippi to bring their four-legged residents in to keep the hotel guests company in their rooms.

“We’re an extended-stay Hilton branded property. We have a lot of extended-stay guests with Keesler Air Force Base, Ingalls Shipbuilding and other supporting industries. I could see that our guests were lonely, and I wanted to fill a void for them and at the same time help our community,” says Teresa Johnston, the brain behind project Fostering Hope as well as the hotel sales director, in an interview with Bored Panda.

As a result of the program, the shelter has more vacancies to help even more dogs in need.

The shelter houses roughly 8,000 dogs per year. It also has an impressive rehoming/adoption rate of about 80%. Through the project, the hotel and the shelter hope to help out the other 20% so no dog dies as a result of being unnoticed.

The very best part about the program is that, if a guest falls in love with their foster dog, they can apply to be their forever human.

If a guest decides they want to give their furry companion a forever home, all they need to do is fill out the application for adoption and pay a $50 adoption fee. The hotel will send the application over to the shelter for vetting.

Though it doesn’t happen often, the shelter may decide that a person’s lifestyle isn’t the best fit for a particular dog. In that event, they often invite the applicant to visit the shelter to meet another doggy resident that might do better with that person, if one is available.

Fostering Hope has been a huge success for both the hotel and the shelter.

To date, they have seen no less than 34 dogs be adopted through the hotel’s fostering program. That’s more than one dog per month, on average!

“People love animals and we have many guests that decide to stay at the Home2 Suites by Hilton Biloxi North/D’Iberville because of this program. We keep doing what we’re doing, our families during the summer love the program and our servicemen and women love the program all year long,” Johnston continued.

With programs like this, we can save a lot more of our furry best friends.

Johnston encourages anyone with the ability to start such a program to try and, apparently, it really doesn’t take much.

“It takes a property cheerleader, a strong operations team and a commitment to the local shelter to find homes for all these animals one at a time. Love what you do!” She concludes.

To learn more about this amazing program that’s working wonders for shelter dogs and lonely dog lovers alike, watch the hilarious video below and visit their site to book a stay if you’re looking for a luxury, dog-friendly destination to visit.

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Source: Bored Panda/Home2Suites by Hilton/Facebook