A van on a rescue mission pulled into a parking lot behind PAWS Chicago Medical Center in Little Village Wednesday afternoon. When the side doors of the vehicle opened, the beagles inside began howling as if celebrating the end of a successful journey.
The three adult beagles, along with three puppies and 16 cats, traveled more than 300 miles to Chicago from the Humane Society of Southern Illinois in Murphysboro, near Carbondale. The shelter is set to close later this year due to “rising costs” and “lack of adequate funding,” among other reasons, according to PAWS Chicago.
“Chicagoland always helps out in times of need,” said Tom McFeeley, a PAWS Chicago employee.
That’s because the no-kill animal welfare organization’s expanded space can house about 300 pets across two Chicago locations, and because of its lifetime return policy, the animals will be cared for for the rest of their lives.
Once an animal becomes a PAWS Chicago pet, it always remains a PAWS Chicago pet, McFeeley said.
“If you adopt an animal today, we will take it back tomorrow. We will take it back 10 years from Tuesday,” he said. “It doesn’t matter because we want the animal to be happy and live.”
In the short term, the organization is counting on its large network of volunteers ready to take in pets for a temporary period.
McFeeley said closing the Humane Society of Southern Illinois would further exacerbate shelter overcrowding, a pervasive problem in the southern part of the state.
When natural disasters or other shelter closures cause overpopulation in areas across North America, PAWS Chicago can tap into its foster network and encourage people to adopt so it can take in pets from those areas who desperately need them to relieve overpopulation pressures, McFeeley added.
PAWS Chicago brought in stray animals from far-flung areas including Texas and the Caribbean.
PAWS Chicago staff member Tori Binelli told the Tribune why residents should adopt animals like beagles and other rescued animals.
“We have constant company,” Binelli said. “We have a wonderful friend, a weird guy, who lives in his house. I have a cat, and he amuses me constantly because he’s so silly and does so many different things, and I take a lot of pictures of him. I have rolls of film full of him.”
Other animals entering Chicago shelters aren’t as lucky as those who arrived at PAWS Chicago on Wednesday.
National Animal Protection Organization Best Friends Animal Society released new data Tuesday showing that in 2023, of the more than 30,000 pets that entered animal shelters in the Chicago metropolitan area, about 2,700 were needlessly killed because they were temporarily homeless.
A Chicago Animal Care and Control report on the city’s shelter shows that more than 3,300 cats and dogs were euthanized in 2023.
Binelli said she realizes that prospective pet owners may be concerned that shelter animals are different from animals one might get from a breeder. But Pinelli stressed that pet owners won’t really know whether they’ll get along with a shelter animal or one from a breeder until well after the adoption.
““You do the best you can. You get your pet, but then you have to get to know his personality,” Binelli said. “You have to understand how he functions in your home and you have to work with him.”
McFeeley said some people find they are drawn to a pet that is deaf or blind or perhaps has some other kind of quirk.
““The dog tends to choose you, or the cat tends to choose you,” he said.
