Animal Shelters Fall on Hard Times

Adoptions and donations drop as economy forces owners to give up their pets.

Heartland Animal Shelter in Northbrook is looking for a home for Sparky, who was rescued from a shelter that euthanizes animals. He was sent there by his owner who lost her home and had no funds to board him. A Refuge for Saving the Wildlife, also in Northbrook, has been looking for a new home for Eddie the Cockatoo for a year and a half. The bird was given up by his owner whose business was crashing. At the Community Animal Rescue Effort (CARE) in Evanston, an older dog was handed over by a woman who had lost her home and was moving in with friends. The dog didn’t live long afterward. “She just died of a broken heart,” said volunteer Erin Marcus. “Those are bad days when we take in animals like that.” The details are always different, but…

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Elizabeth Manaster

7:15 am on Friday, July 15, 2011

We adopted our Akita, Alaska, from Orphans of the Storm as an older dog and he is so great! He is large and a bit scary looking since he is all black, so I feel that our house is very safe from intruders, but with us he is wonderful. He is our third dog adopted from Orphans and they have all been great. I would always adopt from a shelter.   more ›

The Mom Next Door

Four-Legged Friends in Need

Animal welfare groups and food pantries provide assistance for pets whose owners have fallen on hard times

The ASPCA estimates that between 5 million 7 million cats and dogs wind up in shelters every year. The reasons vary, but many are given up by their owners. Nearly half are euthanized because no one adopts them. This weighed heavily in my decision to go to a local shelter, rather than a pet store or breeder, when I adopted a dog back in September. At the time, a staff member at the shelter told me that I was really saving two animals: my dog Kara and the dog she was leaving a space for. The past two years have seen unprecedented overcrowding in animal shelters because of the economy. Many local organizations like Heartland Animal Shelter in Northbrook and Save A Pet in Gurnee, both of which have a no-kill policy, report that pet …

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