Wharton lecturer and Fortune 500 executive Michael Wong didn’t set out to become a pet foster parent. He wasn’t even looking to volunteer. But he had a friend who asked Wong for help walking a dog he was fostering from the Brandywine Valley Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BVSPCA) in West Chester, and Wong enjoyed the experience.
Now two years later, he and his family have fostered six dogs — and permanently taken in one of the shelter’s most problematic former residents. The experience has reshaped the way he thinks about — and acts on — his values.
“I’m not someone who has tons of free time,” says Wong, who teaches communication and is also a contributing editor for the MIT Sloan School of Management. “I’ve got a full-time job, I’ve got kids, I’ve got emails coming in at midnight. But this? This makes me feel human.”
“Helping others isn’t something I carved out time for — it’s something that gave more meaning to the time I already had.” — Michael Wong
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the past 20 years, less than 30 percent of Americans say they do volunteer work — any kind of volunteer work. This means most of us don’t take part in our neighborhood cleanups. We don’t collect donations for charity or make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches after church. And few of us spend our spare time housing unwanted pets.
During an era often depicted as an image of a flaming trash receptacle (that’s a dumpster fire), this rate is troubling, to say the least. Why are we so civically disengaged? Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe it’s our cell phones. Maybe it’s kids these days.
Or maybe, as Michael Wong’s story suggests, it’s because we haven’t found the thing that tugs our heartstrings — and we simply haven’t taken the leap. For Wong, that leap came in the form of an underweight, high energy, eminently unadoptable husky named Kane.
Raising Kane
Two years ago, after Wong had walked some shelter dogs, he and his wife decided to try temporarily taking one in. His family — back then, both their boys were in high school — already had Mochi, a purebred English lab with a temperament suited to onboarding and mentoring a visitor.
Wong had seen some of the longer-term sheltered residents in desperate need of a break from the environment. Fostering shelter pets temporarily frees up space for the operation to take in another animal. What’s more, bringing a pet home for a weekend, week, or couple of weeks makes them more adoptable.

“Spending even a few days with a foster family can make a world of difference in their recovery,” says Lindsey King of the Pennsylvania SPCA on Erie Avenue.
As Wong walked by the kennels, Kane, a wiry white husky mix with a red-and-black crusted muzzle and gnawed foreleg, didn’t make the best first impression. “He was in rough shape — banged up from banging his face against the holding pen, skinny and clearly stressed.”
Typical of his breed, Kane was high-energy and prey-driven — “intense,” says Wong. The dog had been adopted and returned a few times already.
“But he needed to get out of there,” and “there was something about him,” he says. The couple took Kane home for a few nights; it went fine. After Wong brought Kane back, another family adopted the dog — and returned him yet again. The next time Wong and his wife came for a visit — coincidentally, on her birthday — Kane was back in his kennel.
“You can’t rush a rescue dog who’s still learning to go up the stairs. You have to be patient, gentle. That energy rubs off on the rest of your day.” — Michael Wong
“It was like fate. [My wife] looked at me and said, ‘That’s it. He’s our dog.’ And that was that,” he recalls. It made sense to Wong, too, who grew up as a latchkey kid whose after-school companions were all dogs: a German shepherd-collie mix, purebred German shepherd and a Siberian husky.
Acclimating Kane wasn’t always easy — he once ran away for five excruciating hours — but he’s now cemented his place as part of the family, who have continued to foster more dogs. Along the way, their sons became part of the routine.
“They took turns walking, feeding, and — honestly — falling in love,” says Wong. ”They see these animals come in scared, unsure, leaving confident, tails wagging, and that transformation hits differently when you’re the one making it happen.”
Fostering dogs also changed the rhythm of their home life. “It forces us to slow down,” says Wong. “You can’t rush a rescue dog who’s still learning to go up the stairs. You have to be patient, gentle. That energy rubs off on the rest of your day.”
Time to volunteer — at the BVSPCA, or anywhere
The BVSPCA operates four shelters in PA (West Chester, Plymouth Meeting, Lancaster and Harrisburg), two in Delaware and recently expanded to manage animal control services in Washington, D.C. Their facilities take in more than 50 animals a day, mostly cats and dogs, including many from ACCT. They report a no-kill rate that’s 12 points better than the national average of 82 percent.
Like most SPCAs, the BVSPCA offers pet surrender and adoption, affordable veterinary care and pet food assistance. They also have a six-week therapy dog program that trains and certifies dogs to bring comfort to hospitals, prisons and youth.
For all of the above missions, they rely on Wong — and more than 1,000 other volunteers of all ages, skill sets and comfort levels.
“People think volunteering at a shelter means petting cats and walking dogs. And sure, some of that happens,” says Hailey Marcus, the organization’s director of community engagement. Other volunteers photograph pets for adoption portraits, plan events, help with fundraising, deliver pet food to people who can’t make it to the shelter, or perform administrative or data operations work.
“I’m not someone who has tons of free time. I’ve got a full-time job, I’ve got kids, I’ve got emails coming in at midnight. But this? This makes me feel human.” — Michael Wong
When a crisis occurs — as when a one-pound kitten “Roo” came in with a necrotic, duct-taped-on front leg (now a tripod, Roo’s all better and gone viral), and whose case revealed a massive hoarding situation in a Coatesville home — volunteers pitch in, making room for new residents, fostering others.
The organization also relied on volunteer help when someone showed up to surrender 38 dogs in the back of a U-Haul. “Not in crates. Just … loose,” says Program Manager Meg Anderson. “We were grabbing slip leashes, trying to keep them from running off. It was wild — but we got them all.”
Staff has been trained to deal with these types of situations. But for volunteers, such experiences can be life-changing.
“Volunteering trains you to be present. To listen. To do something just because it needs doing, not because it benefits you,” says Wong. “That kind of mindset changes how you show up at work, in relationships, in everything.”
Once you find something you care about and like doing, it’s fine to start small. “There’s never a perfect time,” he says. “Helping others isn’t something I carved out time for — it’s something that gave more meaning to the time I already had.”
“Just say yes. You never know what kind of life that one yes might open up.”
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