Does anyone on here foster rescue dogs?

Having been recently asked to provide a temporary foster home for a rescue labrador I would be grateful if anyone who is or has been involved with rescue fostering would be able to tell me of their experiences in this capacity. I am very interested in doing this but have some reservations as to how this would affect my own dog. We have a GR dog who is 21 months old, sociable, doing very well with his training, travels well, isn't destructive and is able to be left for acceptable periods of time without any problems. As with any dog it has taken a lot of hard work to get our dog to this stage and I would not wish to upset the progress we have made with him.

If we were to take a dog on a temporary foster basis do you think that any adverse behaviour problems a rescue may have would affect the behaviour of our dog as he is still a youngster - we have already said that we would only be able to take a dog that has no dog aggression problems but realise that some of  these dogs can often have various or numerous other behaviour problems.

We did not take the labrador - who was being rehomed due to having spent a lot of his 4 years being left alone in the garden while his owner worked all day - as we would have had to collect him straight from the vets, where he had been neutered, and didn't think it was the best situation for introducing him to our dog. He would have been feeling a bit under the weather from his anaesthetic and meeting under those conditions and not on neutral ground didn't seem to be a great idea to me. Luckily a new owner was able to collect him straight away and he did not have to be fostered.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated - as much as I would love to help out the welfare and well being of our own dog has to come first. The rescue involved is a small local one and is not breed specific.

I fostered last year and it is very rewarding. 

As for my won dogs they are well used to canine visitors so it didn't affect them at all, and fortunately the fosters were no trouble with other dogs, this might not always be the case.

One warning, there is such a phenomenon as "Foster Failure"  this doesn't man you fail at fostering, ti means you end up keeping the foster as your own.  It is hard not to end up with foster failures :D

I fostered a Border Collie about six years ago when my GSD was 18 months old. It wasn't really through choice as a `friend' had left her  violent partner and she couldn't get a rescue home to take him. He was a similar age to my dog and they got on very well. in fact I think my GSD taught him a lot. Unfortunately this `friend' just abandond him and
and I felt guilty as I just didn't feel the same love for him as my own dog.
He had obviously been through a lot and had lots of separation problems and I could have kept him but as I work I felt I couldn't give him the attention he needed.  I kept him for three months until I found the perfect home for him.  
I feel I saved his life as she was going to have him put to sleep but i felt guilty that I just didn't bond with him.
I'm sure if I had gone into this as my own choice I might have felt differently.

I foster Springers on a regular basis, to the extent that as one goes another one comes in, i actually think its been good for my dogs to share their space with so many different dogs, to the extent that own rescue that had issues with other dogs, is now more than happy to accept others in to her house.

Thank you for your replies - lots of things to take into consideration - and Brainless I know what you mean about wanting to keep them, it is one of my worries that I haven't voiced to the rest of the household yet - I told them it wouldn't be a problem parting with them as we really can't afford another dog at the moment :D

My parents are kind of fostering, I say kind of but she is one of our own bred, er owner unfortantly is really poorly again with Cancer and is unable to get out of bed some day, let alone look after a setter so we have her back and we are working with our contacts plus breed rescue to find her a home.  Parents have already said we need to do this within two weeks or she'll have to stay because they don't want to let her settle in to ours and then go onto a new home, I think it's because they don't want to become too attached to this bitch again!

Normally this bitch has trouble with some other dogs (infact we had her untill 10/11 months and was causing problems with her mother back then but she's fine with our current lot)

I think though the thing with fostering is you have to know you can part with the dogs and also be prepared for problems to show with these dogs.  Some will come from lovely homes but owner an no-longer care for them, others may have a bad or unknown history.