AMCC COMMUNITY ALL-STAR: EATON'S FOSTER FAMILY IS SPECIAL BREED

Note:  This is the first in a series of stories that will highlight the good works performed in local communities by members of the athletic departments staffs at AMCC institutions.  Erin Eaton is our first featured AMCC Community All-Star.

Growing up, Erin Eaton assumed that every dog had a happy home.  The family of the Pitt-Greensburg women’s basketball head coach and assistant athletic director always had a dog, and she couldn’t imagine life without one.  And then, when she was 21, their dog of 16 years passed away.

“I was so sad,” she said.

Her sister decided to fill the sense of loss by volunteering at a local animal shelter, and Erin was intrigued.

“I started by just donating—food, supplies, whatever was needed,” she explained.  “That is how I found out about shelter animals, and that every dog does not have a happy home, and the great need that exists to help them.”

When she got the job at Pitt-Greensburg, she decided to volunteer with the Pet Adoption League, a no-kill shelter.  She initially spent a lot of time bringing the dogs in the shelter to Pet Smart adoption fairs on the weekends.

Eventually the shelter staff asked if she would be interested in their foster program.  With three dogs of her own, all rescues, she wasn’t sure if she—or her dogs—could handle it.  Her concern was short-lived.  Since 2009, Erin has fostered 20 dogs.

“Of those, 19 were adopted, and there was one “foster fail,” she said with a smile.  “Foster fail” is shelter talk for a foster parent who ends up adopting the pet themselves.  Erin has opened her home to a large variety of dogs, ranging from border collie puppies (“crazy”) to her most recent, an senior beagle with cancer who came from Animal Friends of Westmoreland County.

“I picked him up for foster on December 31 and was by his side when he passed away only 22 days later,” she said. “I didn’t know it would be so short but he had such a wonderful time with my dogs, they just took him in and it was like he was starting life all over again.

“Really, the dogs seem to do more fostering than people,” she noted, “especially for the puppy mill dogs.”

Because puppy mill dogs have spent most of their lives largely confined to cages simply to breed then have their puppies taken away from them quickly, it is a process to assimilate them with other dogs.  That is where her trio—Snickers, an eight year old mutt; Scoops, a six year old beagle mix, and Radar, a four year old puggle mix—step up.

In the end, it is all about helping these dogs until they can find their “forever homes,” Erin explained.  “For me, to see them from the moment they come into the shelter is so heart-warming.  It’s what keeps me coming back.”