Diane Hutton is Animal Alliance’s webmaster and adoption coordinator, and truly the “glue” that holds everyone and everything at Animal Alliance together. From her command post at her home in Titusville, Diane fields over 100 e-mails and countless phone calls each day.

She oversees animals for adoption and receives in all adoption applications submitted online, which means that a blizzard of e-mails comes in all day long to her computer. Diane screens applications for suitability to the particular pet of interest, contacts all prospective adopters and arranges their meetings with the animal they are interested in adopting.

Diane and her husband John owned several McDonald’s franchises in Mercer County and retired from the restaurant business several years ago after years of marathon workdays. They bought a giant RV so they can drive to their second home in Florida with all their animals.

Two birds and nine other lucky animals call the Hutton residence “home.” The menagerie include five cats and Sassy, a pit bull mix rescued from the streets of Trenton; Oliver, rescued as an emaciated, neglected, diminutive, middle-aged Maltese; Nicky, an aged, diabetic, blind poodle mix whose owner died, and Chelsea, a 15 (!) year-old petite Maltese who is the boss of all the other dogs.

“Chelsea Girl” as Diane calls her is still a little spitfire who wags her tail and nudges the other dogs into play. She also manages to remove any hair bow ever affixed to her hair in short order. Diane’s longtime foster dog “Eddie” arrived at Animal Alliance with two broken legs and has required multiple surgeries and specialty care which Diane has lovingly provided over the past year.

Diane created a fully adaptive home for Eddie, complete with padded bathroom, playpen and a series of mobility systems that allow him to exercise yet stay out of danger of re-injury. She is an expert foster mother who has fostered countless litters of puppies and their mothers, bottle-feeding kittens, and a variety of other special medical cases.

Prior to co-founding Animal Alliance in 2002, Diane worked with another rescue group aiding animals from Trenton via weekly adoption days and cat cage cleaning at PetsMart in Princeton where she was well known for her fastidious cleaning techniques.

A lifelong animal lover and longtime insomniac, Diane works tirelessly on behalf of the creatures entrusted to the care of Animal Alliance, working full days and well into the night to help connect animals to their forever homes, and coordinating the myriad of logistics that make adoptions happen day in and day out.