“Enjoy the silence in here,” Cher Martin is saying. “It won’t be quiet for long.” Martin is giving a pre-opening tour of the dog kennels at the new home of Animals Deserving of Proper Treatment, a Naperville-based no-kill shelter. Though it’s not exactly a canine or feline version of the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons–there’s more stainless steel and fluorescent lighting than porcelain and chandeliers–the $1 million, 11,000-square-foot shelter, which opened earlier this month, has everything a homeless dog or cat could want.
There’s an outside exercise and training area surrounded by six large pens, showers (for humans and animals), isolation rooms, a lab area, a post-operative recovery room, an interview room for prospective adopters, a meeting room, a cat community room where cats can run free, a puppy room . . . and mostly, space for about 100 cats and more than 50 dogs. All brand new.
Until now, ADOPT had no facility. Animals that it took in–the group adopts out some 2,000 dogs and cats a year–had been housed with foster families.
“We have had ideas for a real building since Day One,” says Martin, president of the 14-year-old organization.
The building’s location may be its biggest asset. The shelter abuts the Burlington Northern tracks, just west of the Illinois Highway 59 station, giving thousands of daily commuters a view of the fenced pens where animals can strut their stuff and, it’s hoped, melt some hearts.
If only the unwanted dogs and cats that populate other shelters around Chicago were so lucky.
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“This is the front lines right here. Ground zero,” said Melanie Sobel, director of program services for Chicago’s Commission on Animal Care and Control at the David R. Lee shelter–i.e., “the pound”–at 27th Street and Western Avenue.
Unlike private no-kill shelters–“no-kill” being a misnomer that will be addressed later–Animal Care and Control can’t pick and choose what comes through the door. It gets 70,000 calls a year for stray, injured, abused or neglected animals and takes in 30,000 of them, almost all cats and dogs.
On any given day, 80 dogs–healthy, screened for good temperament, spayed or neutered–fill two adoption pavilions at David R. Lee.
Looking for an AKC-registered poodle? You won’t find one here. Looking for a friendly mutt with a face only a dog person could love? This is the place. If you’re a cat person, Sobel will have 25 cats and kittens–healthy and spayed or neutered–waiting for homes.
Also on any given day at David R. Lee, animals will be killed, by injection. Some days it’s 10 or 20. Some days it’s 40. Some days it’s a lot more.
Last year, 18,000 animals were killed there, part of the estimated 30,000 cats and dogs euthanized in the Chicago area annually. Sobel wishes there were another way.
“Animal Control is perceived as the mean dog catcher who’s going to grab that dog who’s running free and who’s happy and bring them into this place, where we’ll kill them,” Sobel said. “I mean, who doesn’t want to be no-kill? My God. But we have to be realistic.”
A misnomer
Even at no-kill shelters, animals are killed.
“One thing we see is the misperception of `no kill,'” said Amy Deptuch, director of the Animal Care League in Oak Park, nominally a no-kill facility. “The public thinks no one ever dies at these shelters, that the animals are kept there as long as it takes to find them a home.” A lot of people think that at a no-kill, nothing dies.
A soothing thought, perhaps, but an uninformed one. There are just too many animals and not enough facilities.
“If we take in [very sick or aggressive] animals, and they take up a cage for six months or longer and we can’t adopt them out, we can’t take in any other animals,” Deptuch said. “They’d use all our resources.”
There are kills, no-kills and never-kills. The never-kills, said one shelter official, are the ones you see raided on TV, where dozens of dogs and cats live in abysmal conditions. But no matter the type of shelter, the final aim is the same.
“The goal of all shelters is to stop euthanizing adoptables,” Deptuch said. “But not all shelters have the same definition of adoptable.”
Even shelters such as the Animal Care League and ADOPT, which can choose what they take in, may end up with animals that have to be euthanized. Chicago’s Animal Care and Control or the Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago take everything–the sick, the injured, the vicious, the unadoptable.
If you listen to their detractors, people at the kill shelters gleefully send puppies and kittens to the great beyond. That may be because casting kill shelters in the role of the bad guy can pay off, literally.
“What I don’t like is when these other organizations say things that make them look like the good guys fighting big, bad Animal Control,” Sobel said. “That’s how a lot of these places fundraise. They make it kill vs. no-kill. And they say, Why give your money to a facility that is going to kill animals? . . . I guess they have to have a villain so they can raise funds.”
By and large, though, the kills and no-kills do work closely together. ADOPT, for example, brings in dogs and cats from DuPage County and Chicago animal control facilities. The Animal Care League imports animals from other facilities. Several shelters get animals from David R. Lee.
Not for the squeamish
A visitor doesn’t have to be at David R. Lee or the Anti-Cruelty Society long before hearing the stories. Or seeing the unpleasant.
A young pomeranian, wrapped in bandages, lies in the corner of a cage, the victim of scalding by a family member. A cat had been thrown, in a carrier, into a Dumpster behind a no-kill shelter that had told the cat’s owner it had no room for the animal. A brindle pit bull with a mangled leg had been tied to a fence and abandoned in an alley outside another shelter.
“It’s very hard when you see some of the things we see,” said Peggy Froh Asseo, vice president for external affairs at the Anti-Cruelty Society, where about 8,000 animals were euthanized in fiscal 2002. “You go home crying. Everyone who works here goes home crying at some time.”
Even the surrenders can be exasperating.
“Some say, `I’m beating my dog. Please take it.’ Some say, `I found it,’ when it’s theirs,” Deptuch said. “Sometimes you wonder, when people say they’re moving, what has happened to the bond between you and your dog that you’ll move and just give up the animal? We get a good chunk of people who are very upset. But we get a lot of, `Yeah, I’m moving, I want to get rid of her.'”
An official at another shelter said, “We have a saying around here: `People are scum.'”
Two shelters, one cause
The first no-kill shelter in Chicago was the Lake Shore Foundation for Animals, founded in 1966. It’s now the Lake Shore Animal Shelter, still an all-volunteer organization, and has its animals–about 150 at last count–spread out among foster families, vet clinics and the West Loop Canine Club, a doggy day-care center on Lake Street. Also living at West Loop are adoptable dogs from Chicago Canine Rescue, one of the newer shelters in the Chicago area, having been founded in November 2001.
Two shelters, one old, one new, under one roof with one cause.
“Our mission all along has been to take in dogs that have had a home and have to be given up–someone is having a baby, allergies, someone’s moving, the owner dies,” said Ann Markham, a member of Lake Shore’s board of directors.
Lake Shore finds homes for 250 to 300 dogs and 100 or so cats a year and is able to keep a good flow of animals moving through the shelter.
“The last thing we want to do is warehouse animals,” President Elizabeth Curran said. “That’s not fair to the animals.”
For a shelter that has been around for less than a year and a half, Chicago Canine Rescue has had remarkable success, placing 169 dogs last year (it has about 50 animals looking for homes now). Still, the all-volunteer shelter could have placed more.
“We don’t have a long list of people who want to adopt,” said Lisa Tingley, founder and president of Chicago Canine Rescue Foundation. “We have a long list of people who want to give us dogs.”
A key component
As bad as the pet overpopulation problem is, it would be exponentially worse if not for the volunteers who work at the shelters. Some handle paperwork, some help with adoptions, some keep Web pages updated, some do lab work, some raise funds, some–a lot–walk dogs, play with cats and clean cages.
“Without volunteers, no shelter could stay in business,” Asseo said.
Arlene Halko has one of the more interesting volunteer jobs. She tries to match up lost or found dogs with their owners at the Anti-Cruelty Society.
If someone calls the society to report a lost dog, he or she will be asked to fill out a report. Those reports are matched with the “founds,” either call-ins, dogs brought in by their finders or strays that have been picked up. Between 250 and 300 pets and owners are reunited every year.
“I had a recent one, and, frankly, it was the greatest feeling,” Halko said. “A woman called in and left a message that she had lost her Rottweiler. She told us where she had lost it, the dog’s description, the dog’s name . . . I think it was Lulu.
“When I came in, I picked up the phone messages, and someone had reported finding a Rottweiler. So I called him. I said, `See if she answers to the name Lulu.’ He called her and she responded,” Halko said.
“So I called the woman and matched them together, and they got together and they called me back–it was her.”
A way to test the patience of pooches
What’s that woman doing sticking her fingers between that dog’s toes?
And grabbing its ears.
And pulling on its lips.
Somebody should call the Anti-Cruelty Society. Wait, this is the Anti-Cruelty Society.
Karen Okura is the society’s manager of animal behavior and training. And one of her duties is to administer a 20- to 30-minute test to see if a dog has any quirks that might prevent it from being a good candidate for adoption.
The exam is a two-person job. The team checks to see if a dog is too excitable, if it jumps on people, if it minds being handled roughly (as a playful kid might treat a dog), how it responds to sudden noises.
“We’ll pet them kind of hard, we’ll pull the tail, stick our fingers between their toes, pull on their lips, look in their mouths,” explained Okura, who has been at the society for 19 years. “Do they mind being touched at the base of their tail? Some dogs do. We hug them–hard. It’s what we call a safety hug, like vets use, so we won’t get bitten in the face if they’re biters. We really sort of maul them to see how they respond.
“We test to see if they have issues with people coming near their food bowl. We test to see how they take food from our hands. We take them by other dogs. We want to make sure these dogs will be good pets.”
Results are recorded and show up–“Might not get along with other dogs”–on a dog’s kennel card, which prospective adopters can see clipped to the animal’s cage.
“If someone with children walks in here and wants a dog, you can’t tell them they can’t have the dog without telling them why,” Okura said. “They deserve to know why.”
— William Hageman
Where help and homes are needed
Here are shelters where dogs, cats and other animals are available for adoption, and other organizations that are sources of information. Locations are Chicago unless otherwise noted. Volunteers (and adoptive homes) are welcome:
– ADOPT (Naperville), 630-718-0515
– Adopt a Pet (Northbrook), 847-673-8999
– Anderson Animal Shelter (South Elgin), 847-697-2880
– Animal Care League of Oak Park, 708-848-8155
– Animal Welfare League (Chicago), 773-667-0088
– Animal Welfare League (Chicago Ridge), 708-636-8586
– Anti-Cruelty Society, 312-644-8338
– Assisi Animal Foundation (Crystal Lake), 815-455-9411
– Bolingbrook Animal Shelter, 630-759-0332
– Buddy Foundation (Arlington Heights), 847-813-7206
– Cat Guardians (Lombard), 630-543-3395
– Chicago Canine Rescue, 312-458-9294
– Chicago Community Humane Center, 773-764-2242
– Chicagoland Dog Rescue (Elk Grove Village), 847-259-6458
– City of Aurora Animal Care and Control, 630-897-5695
– City of Chicago Animal Care and Control, 312-747-1406
– Community Animal Rescue Effort (Evanston), 847-705-2653
– Critter Corral Guinea Pig Rescue (Steger), 708-757-1160
– Du Page County Animal Control (Wheaton), 630-682-7197
– Evanston Animal Shelter, 847-866-5080
– Felines Inc. Adoption and Shelter, 773-465-4132
– Ferret Advice & Info Resource (Westmont), 630-968-8142
– Forest Park Animal Shelter, 708-366-8156
– Furry Friends Foundation, 312-397-1001
– Greater Chicago Ferret Association (Westchester), 708-442-8650
– Harmony House for Cats, 773-463-6667
– HELP (St. Charles), 630-879-8500
– Helping Paws Animal Welfare Associates (Crystal Lake), 815-459-2641
– Hinsdale Humane Society, 630-323-5630
– House Rabbit Society (Westchester), 847-266-0068
– Humane Society of Plainfield, 815-436-2700
– Kay’s Animal Shelter (Arlington Heights), 847-259-2907
– Lake Shore Shelter for Animals, 312-409-1162
– Naperville Humane Society, 630-420-8989
– Oak Park Animal Control, 708-358-2700
– Orphans of the Storm (Riverwoods), 847-945-0235
– PACT Humane Society (Downers Grove), 630-375-7017
– People’s Animal Welfare Society (Tinley Park), 815-464-7298
– Pet-Able Adoptions (Palatine), 847-604-4447
– Pet Rescue Animal Sanctuary (Bloomingdale), 630-893-0030
– Pets In Need (Ringwood), 815-728-1462
– Precious Pets Almost Home, 312-409-2516
– Rebecca’s Buns/rabbit rescue (Woodridge), 630-533-0601
– Red Door Animal Shelter, 773-764-2242
– Save-a-Pet (Grayslake), 847-740-7788
– South Suburban Humane Society, (Chicago Heights), 708-755-7387
– Southside Humane Society (Matteson), 708-720-2440
– Strays Halfway House (Schaumburg), 630-351-3150
– T.L.C. Animal Shelter (Lockport), 708-301-1594
– Tree House Animal Foundation, 773-784-5488
– Will County Humane Society (Shorewood), 815-741-0695
– West Suburban Humane Society (Downers Grove), 630-960-9600
Spay-neuter spots
Several facilities offer low-cost spay/neuter clinics and vaccinations:
Animal Welfare League (Chicago), 773-667-0088
Anti-Cruelty Society (Chicago), 312-644-8338
Evanston Animal Shelter, 847-705-2653
Luv-A-Pet/Petco Stores (Chicago), 773-935-7388
Luv-A-Pet/Petco Stores (suburbs), 847-759-8700
P.A.W.S. (Chicago), 773-521-7729
You also can locate a low-cost spay-neuter clinic in your area by calling 800-248-SPAY.
