Eric Augustine had been anticipating this Thanksgiving’s homecoming for years. But till very lately, it didn’t function an elaborate and almost miraculous plan to move a shelter canine.
Eric arrived home in Hampden Township on Nov. 10 from a 13-month deployment with the Pennsylvania National Guard to Fort Bliss, Texas – almost actually his final earlier than he retires from navy service, a terrific reduction to him, his spouse Megan, and their two young daughters.
While in Texas, Eric volunteered at an animal shelter in El Paso, and fashioned a bond with a young Shepherd-mix canine – now named Socks – who appeared to solely belief the guardsman.
At occasions, “he was the only one I could turn to,” Eric stated of Socks, describing the sentiments of isolation residing on a navy base the place “having people there isn’t the same as having your family.”
“If we didn’t adopt him, I would’ve, in the back of my mind, held out hope and I would’ve convinced myself that somebody adopted him to make myself feel better,” Eric stated. But after 16 years within the PA Guard – 9 spent on energetic full-time obligation, together with 24 of the final 40 months – ending the ultimate deployment with that doubt wasn’t an choice.
A life-long canine lover, Eric began volunteering on the shelter to calm his thoughts on deployment. In civilian life, he’s an lawyer for the state authorities; within the guard, he’s a lawyer for the Judge Advocate General (JAG) part.
In October 2022, the Department of Defense announced it was re-authorizing 2,500 National Guard troops from numerous states to deploy on border safety obligation to assist take care of the inflow of migrants. Pennsylvania supplied headquarters providers, together with JAG.
Eric described usually aggravating work, from officers not taking his authorized recommendation to “soldiers doing stupid things, getting into trouble” and being investigated. But by all of it, Socks grew to become a continuing.
“They would ask me to work with skittish or very timid dogs because the whole idea is you want to get these dogs socialized” to allow them to be adopted, Eric stated. Socks was a very acute case, and wouldn’t permit Eric to the touch him for 3 weeks – till at some point Eric was capable of give him a scratch, and slip a leash on him to go for a walk.
“Ever since then, the walls started crumbling down, and he just became my boy,” Eric stated. “All the people who worked at the shelter were like ‘he’s only like that with you, he’s not that way with anyone else.’ If we didn’t adopt him, I don’t know that he’d ever get adopted.”
Thus started the agonizing means of determining the best way to get Socks again to Pennsylvania. Airlines have largely stopped taking animals which can be too massive to journey within the cabin, Eric stated, with restricted exceptions for the navy. Even after discovering an airline that will take Socks, he would nonetheless have needed to journey within the cargo maintain, together with a protracted layover in Chicago.
“One hurdle after another, it started to seem like an insurmountable task,” Eric stated.
But Megan began asking round, and ultimately a neighbor put her in contact with a girl from a rescue group that transfers dogs from shelters across the nation.
“This woman starts working the phones and creating a logistical plan that came out of a novel somewhere,” Eric stated. Socks was transported by a small personal airplane – organized by the group Pilots N Paws – from El Paso to San Angelo, after which pushed to Austin the place he briefly stayed with a foster household.
“We don’t actually know all the logistics because so many people were at play,” Megan stated. All of them had been very selfless and didn’t need to draw consideration to their work, Eric stated.
Socks was then put in a van with a number of different dogs and pushed by a pair of girls who function Freedom Run Expresswhich shuttles rescued animals from Texas to areas up and down the jap seaboard.
“Her rate was $250, which is nothing, and she didn’t charge him because he’s a veteran. She refused our money,” Megan stated. The Augustines picked up socks from the van service in a car parking zone on Nov. 17, per week after Eric acquired home.
Rescuing Socks is a becoming cap to a protracted profession. Eric tried to affix the navy in 2001, out of a way of patriotic obligation after Sept. 11, however was discovered unfit on account of a previous harm. In 2007, a recruiter acquired him a uncommon medical exemption on the situation that he was becoming a member of as a JAG lawyer and never a fight soldier.
He and the remainder of his guard unit had been wanting to deploy to Afghanistan to combat terrorism, Eric stated, however these excursions by no means occurred. It was solely after he married and had two kids that deployments began popping up. In the summer time of 2020, he began a ten-month stint at an airbase in Kuwait that was supporting American troops in Iraq and Syria.
“We had a two-and-a-half year old and a newborn, and now you’re going?” Megan stated, recalling her shock on the deployment.
The first deployment was extra bodily taxing, she stated, taking good care of a toddler and an toddler by herself – however “the second time around, the kids were older and really aware and very upset” that Eric was away, and the expertise was extra emotionally troublesome. He’s missed three of his eldest daughter’s final 4 birthdays.
“I was like ‘we’re going to do all the fun things to make up for daddy being gone,’” Megan recalled, and ended up operating herself ragged whereas Eric was deployed and feeling utterly alone.
“That’s the struggle you have as a couple,” Megan stated. “One person is inundated with all the things, and the other person is left far away from home, very sad and wishing they could just have one day or one hour with their loved ones at home.”
With two excursions practically back-to-back underneath his belt, Eric received’t be required to do one other one earlier than he’s eligible for retirement at 20 years of service. This yr’s climactic homecoming is most definitely his final.
But the deployments have left their mark, after two years of seeing the struggles of individuals within the Middle East, and the plight of migrants on the southern border — a lot of whom die making an attempt to cross deserts and rivers to achieve the U.S., whereas others are coerced into carrying medication for cartels, Eric stated.
Put the 2 deployments collectively and “it’s a very different perspective,” Eric stated. “You get very frustrated with Americans not understanding how good we have it in America.”
The final deployment would have been much more distressing if not for the animal shelter, and discovering Socks.
“It was therapeutic for me. It kept me sane, kept my spirits up,” Eric stated. “I never enjoyed picking up poop so much in my life.”
