When re-homing a pet, sometimes the best you can do is to find a temporary boarding home – long- or short-term, formal (commercial kennel-free boarding) or informal (a friend or acquaintance “fosters” the pet).

Sometimes these temporary arrangements become permanent. A family who’d never been able to have a cat or dog because of allergies to animal hair tried fostering a “hairless” Cornish Rex cat from the humane society. (We were his previous foster family.) After a week, they adopted him, and a society worker told me, “They’d have kept him even if he needed open heart surgery.”

But we can’t count on that happening every time. Right now, a dog we inherited (literally) has moved in with another dog and its owner, and we’ve realized there are some things we’ll need to clarify. If you’re putting a pet into an informal boarding situation, you should make sure you and the foster family agree on some key questions:

• Is it long-term boarding, or boarding leading to adoption? How do both of you feel about that?

• Who pays the vet bills? And which vet – who has the pet’s health records? This can be especially important with older pets.

• Who pays for food and other necessities?

• What if the pet’s care gets to be too much for the foster family? If they move? If it has behavior problems, or doesn’t get along with the family’s pets?

• Will you want to visit? How often?

• Who’s going to make any hard decisions that come up? Animal lovers can have really different views on euthanasia and other end-of-life issues. You may feel you have seniority in decision-making, but the foster family may feel better qualified because of their daily contact with the pet.