By Carolyn Webb
Being foster mum to nine kelpie cross puppies is hard work for Hanneke De Nobile, but their antics provide non-stop entertainment.
One puppy bit the hem of De Nobile’s jeans and hung on as she walked. Some puppies will bow to each other like sumo wrestlers to indicate they want to play.
Hanneke De Nobile with several of the nine puppies she is fostering, her own dog Quest and foster dog Tangelo.Credit: Jason South
A pup nicknamed Whingie puts her paws up on her pen and screams for attention, but is a little lamb when picked up. “She’ll rest her head on your neck,” De Nobile says. “It’s so sweet.”
RSPCA Victoria foster care network supervisor Martha Esparon said carers played an important role in an animal’s pathway from shelter to new, forever home.
“Some animals need some extra support before they are ready for adoption like having had surgery requiring rehabilitation or needing extra help to learn the basics,” Esparon said.
De Nobile, of Reservoir in Melbourne’s north, has two teenage sons, one of whom lives with autism. She is also one of Melbourne’s super foster carers.
Last year she fostered more than 60 dogs for the charity Starting Over Dog Rescue.
This week she has 12 dogs, including Noki, the puppies’ one-year-old mother; Tangelo, a Staffordshire terrier cross missing a hip bone whose owner didn’t pick her up from a Mildura pound; and Wolke, a big fluffy Maremma sheepdog, who arrived very overweight.
De Nobile also owns the amiable, motherly Labrador named Quest.
Ruth King, a Starting Over director, said: “Hanneke is a selfless person, looking after them.”
No place like home: Two of the nine puppies being fostered in a Reservoir home.Credit: Jason South
King praised the unsung army of foster carers who save animal lives.
“I call them angels,” she said.
The number of dogs fostered through Starting Over Dog Rescue in Victoria grew from 700 two years ago, to 1180 last year. Two years ago, the charity had 150 foster carers but after social media appeals it now has almost 200.
Jabari the papillon cross, pictured soon after Hanneke De Nobile started fostering her.
They would like at least 50 more – particularly those willing to take larger dogs.
Suzana Talevski, a spokesperson for The Lost Dogs Home, said they now had 500 volunteer foster carers – up from 350 a year ago – and that the home aims to double that figure.
The home’s foster carers took more than 4300 animals in 2022-23 – more than double the number three years before. Talevski said two staff members of the home have each fostered more than 120 animals last year.
The RSPCA reported that in the 2022-23 financial year the number of animals fostered fell from 3211 to 2406 and foster carer numbers dropped from 1081 to 911.
But both decreases were due to the closure of its Wangaratta and Epping shelters, after councils didn’t renew RSPCA contracts.
The RSPCA now aims to increase the number of foster carers to 1300. Esparon said foster carers were “the unsung heroes in animal welfare”.
Hanneke De Nobile says she sometimes cries after handing a dog to its permanent owner.
One time, she was fostering a small papillon cross she called Jabari (Swahili for “brave one”) thought to be aged about 10. It was believed Jabari had spent most of her life having puppies at a puppy farm.
Jabari had a hernia, was afraid of being inside, wasn’t toilet trained and had to have 16 teeth removed. “She looked horrible,” De Nobile says.
But after three months of fostering, Jabari was healthy, groomed and desexed.
“She was just a happy little girl.”
Jabari is now the loved pet of a woman in a retirement village and De Nobile is pleased.
“I loved that little dog, so it’s the best feeling,” she said. “It makes you happy and relieved when you know they’re going to a good home.”
Jabari with her new owner in a retirement home.
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