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Sunday, January 05, 2003

By Steve Levin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Sarah McKean's spare bedroom has berber carpet and cream-colored walls, a platform bed and an empty bookcase. There are no lamps, pictures or chairs.

	Sarah McKean is a foster parent to three cats, including these two, from Animal Friends, a no-kill shelter in the Strip District. McKean has dedicated a room in her Shadyside home for the kittens. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Yet some 700 guests have stayed there, usually for weeks at a time, during the past 10 years.

McKean's preparations have been the same for them all: Spread a large dropcloth on the floor, fill up the litter box, arrange the toys and make sure there's plenty of food and water.

She runs a foster home for cats, and her extra bedroom is a "foster room" dedicated to caring for kittens from the Animal Friends shelter, the city's only no-kill facility for cats and dogs.

And that makes McKean, of Shadyside, a foster parent of sorts, one of about 200 in Allegheny County who work with Animal Friends. By opening up their homes and hearts to care for, train and sometimes heal the shelter's residents, they free up cage space at Animal Friends' Strip District location to handle additional cats and dogs that have been abandoned, abused or both.

After their foster work, lasting anywhere from a weekend to several months, the animals return to Animal Friends, ready for adoption.

Tuesday, Animal Friends conducted its fifth annual New Year's Rescue, bringing 58 dogs and cats into the shelter. In order to have enough space for the new arrivals, the shelter sent about a dozen animals to such foster homes as McKean's. It has cage space for 160 dogs and cats.

Pittsburgh has two other major shelters: Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania and the Humane Society of Western Pennsylvania. While Animal Friends is the only shelter with a no-kill policy, the shelters have agreed to work toward achieving a citywide no-kill policy by 2005.

It will be a challenge to do that.

In 2001, the last year for which figures are available, at least 15,000 dogs and cats were euthanized in Pittsburgh, according to estimates compiled by Kathy Hecker, a humane officer for Animal Friends. But the figure could be twice as high: State law requires that shelters account for euthanized dogs, but not cats.

Foster homes are an integral link for a no-kill shelter trying to find adoptive homes for its animals. When an animal is picked up, the shelter neuters or spays it, gives it the appropriate shots and checks it for medical problems.

However, some are newborns that are more susceptible to illness, some need socialization to develop into well-adjusted pets, some may require behavioral training and others are sick or injured and need time to heal.

They're all candidates for foster care. Last year, Animal Friends placed 700 dogs and cats in foster care. All of them ultimately were adopted.

"If we had more foster homes we could save a lot more," said McKean, who provides foster care for kittens who are 4 to 6 weeks old, some of whom fit in the palm of her hand.

Animal Friends' foster home network has grown exponentially during the past two years, primarily through the efforts of Darla Rimer, the shelter's foster care coordinator.

Hired two years ago with the help of a $45,000, two-year grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation, she increased the shelter's paltry list of foster homes from 20 to 200 by creating a database, starting foster workshops and campaigning for volunteers.

"They are pretty much the core of what we do," Rimer said of the volunteers who become foster care providers after undergoing training.

"These animals who aren't socialized would go into a home and act out," forcing owners to give them up, Rimer said.

"The foster home knows [it is] getting an animal with problems and [it has] to help the animals work through those problems."

Sue Froehlich, of Pleasant Hills, initially volunteered at Animal Friends seven years ago as a dog walker. Now she trains dogs that have "special needs" in order to improve their chances for adoption.

"We're able to teach a dog who has been brought in [to Animal Friends] for bad manners how to sit, how to stay, how to come -- the basic manners people are looking for," she said.

Both Froehlich and McKean send their foster animals back to Animal Friends with reports on their personalities, elimination habits and training.

"There's probably one or two I didn't cry over" when she sent it or them back to the shelter for adoption. "For the most part," she said, "it's a very emotional thing.

"But for each one that goes out the door, another comes in."