You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. Grant, I learned a new term this week. I wonder if you know it. Oh, try me. Foster flunk. Nope. Nope, never heard of it. What is it? Well, I learned this from Scott Kaiser, who listens to us in Hammond, Indiana. And Scott sent us an email that said, when you foster companion animals, dogs,

cats, rabbits, ferrets, et cetera, your job is to care for it as if it were your own with food,

shelter, medical care, and above all, since some of these animals have never known it, love.

Scott writes, I've had people say, I don't know how you can give them up to another

adopter.

Well, sometimes you can't.

You flunk and end up adopting them yourself.

That's the flunk.

The foster flunk.

Foster flunk, isn't that great?

I wondered the same thing, actually, how people give up the animals when they're fostering

them.

I know. It's a really long foster period, right? Yes. One of our kiddies, Bianca, she's a sweet little tabby, she's got a bent tail, she's adorable green eyes. She was fostered with a friend of ours, and their story was they gave her up to us. We adopted her because they were moving across the country, and that makes a lot of sense to me. But I also know that the need for kind families that can foster animals, you know,

rehabilitate them, introduce them to kids, introduce them to other animals. There's a desperate need

for that. So you kind of got to cycle the animals through sometimes and get them elsewhere on the,

put them elsewhere on the adoptive.

Yeah. Yeah. It's almost more important in a way. Well, Scott says that he's flunked three times. That's the best kind of flunking. Yes, yes. He has a lot Lassa Apso, a Shih Tzu, and a Bichon. Oh, nice. Thanks Scott for that. That's cool. And it's a thing. I went to Google. It's a thing. foster flunk. We heartily encourage foster flunking on this show.

And we encourage And it's a thing. I went to Google. It's a thing. Foster Flunk. We heartily encourage

Foster Flunking on the show. And we encourage you to give us a call. This is a show about

language and everything related to it. 877-929-9673. Send us an email to Words at

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