'This Is Not The Shelter Where You Want Your Fur Baby', Dog Owner Says

CHICAGO RIDGE, IL — A Bartlett woman has been reunited with her family's dog, but not until after she said her family experienced an aggravating ordeal attempting to get the beloved pet back from a Chicago Ridge animal rescue facility on Monday. The dog wound up at the shelter after she wandered off on Sunday.

Ashley Tamburrano said her Maltese, Missy, was taken to Animal Welfare League after the dog went missing from Tamburrano's father's home in Addison. Tamburrano told Patch on Tuesday that she was informed by an Oak Lawn resident that she had found Missy, but then lost her again.

The Oak Lawn woman, who was in Addison visiting family, planned to take Missy to a local shelter after returning home rather than turning her over to Addison police, Tamburrano said. But before she could be taken somewhere safe, Missy managed to escape the woman’s backyard in Oak Lawn and ended up at the Chicago Ridge-based shelter.

When Tamburrano’s father went to Animal Welfare League with Chicago Ridge police on Monday to get Missy, who suffers from congestive heart failure, he was told the facility was closed. Tamburrano said her father could see people inside the facility and attempted to get someone’s attention to alert them that Missy needed her medicine to care for her heart condition.

“My dad tried showing them pictures of our family dog along with vet records showing she needs her medicine as she has congestive heart failure, but they still turned him away and would not accept the medicine,” Tamburrano wrote in an email to Patch on Tuesday. “Our family was in shambles all night and this morning thinking our dog wouldn’t make it.”

Tamburrano said that she has since gotten the dog back, but not without “causing an uproar” and persevering to get Missy back. She said that after going through this ordeal in trying to get her dog back from Animal Welfare League, she would not want others to take their pets there.

In a statement emailed to Patch on Wednesday, the Animal Welfare League said that it was closed to the public on Monday for Memorial Day. It said that the dog was brought to the rescue facility by Oak Lawn Police after it was found on the street.

According to the statement, the dog had no collar, no microchip, and no other identifying marking. Once the facility accepts an animal, management said, the facility is responsible for its health and welfare. Animals are examined by Animal Welfare League's veterinarian for signs of illness, abuse, or other underlying conditions, officials said.

"It is regrettable that family members chose to express anger at the people who saved their lost dog and returned it to them," the statement said. "Perhaps they will now consider providing their pet with the minimum identification so that when they again fail to protect their pet, people can identify it more quickly, verify it has no communicable illness, and once again return it to the owners and earn their scorn."

Officials said in the statement that on average, the rescue reunites one pet with its owner per week and in recent weeks, had done so with a dog from Texas that was found in Oak Lawn and a blind dog that had been missing for more than a year. Officials said, in most cases, the owners must take responsibility.

"These things happen all the time and they happen because AWL follows all laws and rules regarding animal shelter operations and, over its 86 years of operation figured out the best way to save, shelter, and reunite lost animals," the facility said in the statement. "We regret that some owners, especially those who never bother to microchip their pet insist they know better, but they don’t and invariably and regrettably, their pet will typically wind up paying the price for their arrogance and ignorance."

The incident with Tamburrano, however, isn't the first time Animal Welfare League has drawn criticism in recent years.

In 2018, Patch reported that conditions at the Chicago Ridge shelter were unkempt and had piles of rodent droppings in isolation rooms. Photos provided to Patch also showed sick dogs lying in their own feces or bleeding in cages.

At the time, Patch reported that sources claimed that Animal Welfare League had twice performed mass euthanasia of dogs at the shelter. Former embattled shelter director Linda Estrada denied to Patch that the facility had been killing dogs en masse.

After the investigation into animal abuse at the facility, Estrada was hit with a cease and desist order to practice veterinary medicine without a license. Calls by local activists for Estrada to step down from her leadership role with the shelter persisted before she eventually resigned. The Animal Welfare League facility was then fined and placed on probation by the Illinois Department of Finance and Professional Regulation for violating the state’s Humane Euthanasia in Animal Shelters Act.

Four years later, Tamburrano is now questioning the practices of the facility after she struggled to get the dog that she grew up with and that now lives with her father in Addison back to her rightful home.

“This is not the shelter you want your fur baby to end up at,” she wrote.