Animals
Meet Dana Whitfield, the Foster Who Owns Pou Until the Right Family Shows Up
By Michiawa Zoo News Staff · Published Aug 21, 2026 at 6:40 AM
Michigan Pet Alliance
MICHIAWA (MZN) — When Michigan Pet Alliance gets a 2 a.m. call about an exotic animal that needs bottle feeding, the phone rings at Dana Whitfield's house.
Whitfield, 44, is the alliance's small-exotics intake lead and the legal owner of Pou, the baby fennec fox now waiting on an adopter.
From a blind rabbit to a permit
Whitfield trained as a veterinary technician in her twenties and started fostering in 2012 with a blind rabbit named Argyle that no one at a county shelter expected to place.
She earned her state exotic animal permit in 2016 after taking in a pair of fennec foxes seized from an unlicensed breeder.
Why she isn't keeping him
Every permit slot filled by a permanent pet is a slot she can't use for the next emergency intake.
"Fourteen years in, I still cry every single time one of them leaves," she said. "That's how I know I should keep doing it."
Fourteen years in, I still cry every single time one of them leaves. That's how I know I should keep doing it.
Copyright 2026 Michiawa Zoo News. All rights reserved.
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