Butler County Humane Society always on lookout for foster partners
The Butler County Humane Society is looking for volunteers to serve as foster guardians for some of the cats and dogs it keeps throughout the year at its shelter on Evans City Road in Connoquenessing Township.
“I think I have around 30 active fosters … and I haven’t got as many fosters as I would like,” said Emma Garris, who manages the Humane Society’s foster program. “I am looking for a lot more, especially with the spring coming up.”
Cats and dogs are put into the foster care program whenever they need time away from the shelter to recuperate from illness or injury, or whenever the staff at the Butler County Humane Society is not presently equipped to take care of them.
“They have other fosters that work with certain animals that are too young to stay at the shelter,” Garris said. “They usually help for around four weeks, though it can be a little bit more.”
One of those volunteers was Paula Grubbs, a former reporter and community editor for the Butler Eagle who retired in late 2024. A year later, Grubbs was thinking of filling a hole in her household that had opened two years earlier after Xerox, her 8-year-old pet labrador retriever/border collie mix, died.
“I'd been going back and forth about whether or not to get a dog, and my friend, who is on the board of the Humane Society, suggested I foster,” Grubbs said.
Grubbs was assigned two 10-week-old pit bull/labrador retriever mix puppies named Butter and Cheese, that were part of a litter of six.
“I told them I don't have much experience with little puppies, but I would give it a try,” Grubbs said. “So, I brought them home.”
Grubbs held onto the pair of young pups for 10 days, a period that extended over the Christmas holiday, before she took them back to the Humane Society to have their shots. She hadn’t taken care of any dogs that weren’t previously housebroken before, so the experience was a new one for her.
“Those puppies are a lot of work,” Grubbs said. “They're just so curious and they're into everything and it’s just busy work. But they are so darn cute and entertaining that it made the work worthwhile.”
While the Butler County Humane Society encourages people to enter the foster program, there is an application form that volunteers must fill out.
“The application itself is pretty easy,” Garris said. “I just need to know that you either own your house or that your landlord allows pets. If they do have pets, I reach out to the vets just to make sure that the pets they have are vaccinated and are up to date on their shots.”
“You have to do a background check and you have to give two references of people who will agree that you're a good candidate to foster pets,” Grubbs said. “I did all that and I was immediately accepted.”
Unlike with pet adoption, foster pet guardians have their pets assigned to them by the Humane Society instead of choosing themselves. The guardian can choose whether or not to accept the animal and they still have some say in what kind of cat or dog they receive.
“What I do is I reach out to the volunteer and I ask, ‘Hey, I have four kittens here. Would you be interested in homing them for a little while?’ And they can say yes or they can say no,” Garris said. “They're allowed to choose whether they would like cats or dogs, whether they're comfortable with kittens or puppies. Sometimes there’s a bit of leeway.”
The Humane Society makes the process of foster pet adoption easier by supplying the guardian with the necessary supplies and training.
“They provide everything you need,” Grubbs said. “They put them in a carrier. They give you blankets. They give you a crate. They give you puppy pads. They give you food and they give you toys. (The puppies are) still in the process of being housebroken, so they gave me a big bag of this special litter for the puppies and a pan to put it in.”
Grubbs praised the Humane Society, and Garris in particular, for their handling of one incident that took place on the night of Christmas Eve.
“That night, Cheese stopped eating and he was acting sick,” Grubbs said. “I had to call Emma on New Year's Eve, which was also her birthday, at 9 at night.”
Thanks to Emma’s instructions, Cheese was back to normal by Christmas morning.
“Her instructions were, ‘take some canned food and water it down so it's very watery and try to feed it to him.’ And then he perked up and started playing and acting normal,” Grubbs said. “The point of that story is, the Humane Society people are right there to help you every step of the way.”
