Kendall residents rally for shelter pets
BY STEVE LORD slord@stmedianetwork.com December 29, 2010 5:54PM
Updated: April 19, 2011 5:34AM
YORKVILLE — Kendall County residents and business have responded to the county’s Animal Control crisis.
But at the same time, Kendall’s Animal Control shelter at 802 W. John St. in Yorkville still is strapped for cash and space, said Anne Vickery, the County Board member who is the Animal Control chairman.
“Animal counts are down; people have really stepped up to the plate and adopted animals,” she said this week. “But we’re not seeing as many coming in the door as we’d like.”
In early December the county sent out the alarm that the shelter’s space was filling up, and people were not coming in to adopt animals.
At that time, the shelter had 22 animals — 19 dogs and three cats — which had stayed long-beyond the 37-day limit the shelter has imposed on holding animals. At the time, the county’s Animal Control Committee decided to have Dr. Gary Schlapp, animal control administrator, evaluate the long-term animals to see which of them truly could not be adopted and should be euthanized.
Schlapp did that with some of the longer-term dogs.
In the meantime, people and businesses came forward to help in some way.
For instance, Go Dog Go in downtown Oswego and Nurture Your Pets in Yorkville put together a program to have people donate food, beds and money, which they contributed to the Animal Shelter.
People donated more than 50 bags of pet food, 25 beds and more than $500 to put toward more food, according to Katherine Manola, owner of Go Dog Go.
Also, Nurture Your Pets offered a discount on training for adopted pets, and Go Dog Go offered discounted food for a year for people who adopted a pet from the shelter.
“We have worked diligently over the last few weeks to help ease the burden that has been placed on the shelter,” Manola said.
Employees at Old Second National Bank put together a fundraiser and raised about $600 for the shelter.
The donations have allowed animal control to keep to its past policy of euthanizing only very old, sick or violent animals.
“Hopefully, things are on the upswing,” Vickery said.
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