Pets find new homes at joint adoption event held by city, local shelters

Margie Neighbors had never gone more than six months without having a dog in her life.

She credits her Native American heritage as the reason, saying it was a mix of spiritual and protective reasons her family always had a dog.

“That’s the longest I’ve gone without having a dog in the house,” she said. “It was hard.”

That changed Saturday morning when she and her husband, Fleet, went to Rescue Together, a collaborative dog and cat adoption event held in Lincoln Park, organized by Chicago Animal Care and Control and PAWS Chicago. Another event went on simultaneously in Little Village.

As soon as Butterscotch, a brown Yorkie, ran circles around Fleet and nuzzled up to his beard, they knew she was the one. It was the exact same thing their last Yorkie, Lily, had done — Margie called it “fate.”

“We didn’t expect to fall in love with the first dog we visited,” Margie said while holding Butterscotch, who in turn was holding a blue rope toy she couldn’t part with. “But she did it.”

But Butterscotch wasn’t the first dog they had been scheduled to see. The Neighbors had originally been set to visit with 2-month-old pitbull Salamander, who ended up going home with River North couple Zack Nisbet and Kayla Polanco.

Nisbet and Polanco had been looking for a pitbull and had become obsessed with the gray, 12-pound pup over the last month. They finally got the chance to meet him Saturday and fell even more in love when he darted toward them with a burst of energy as soon as he got through the door.

“We’ve looked at his picture three times a day for the last two weeks,” Polanco said. “We just kept calling him perfect.”

Nisbet is a franchisee of K9 Resorts Luxury Pet Hotels, and plans to open a location in Deerfield. He said he felt like a hypocrite not having a dog and getting into the business, and also wanted to fill the hole left by the five dogs he grew up with.

Salamander was treated like a celebrity before he went home with his new owners.

“He’s a sleepy guy,” Polanco said as Salamander received pets from passersby.

“And he’s the cutest,” Nisbet added.

But it wasn’t all dogs finding new homes.

Tom Haes, a Lake View East resident who has lived in Chicago for six years, said he loved that the people around him had dogs, but going out in the cold to take a dog to relieve itself was among the many reasons he wasn’t as compatible with them.

“I have some nephew dogs in my life that I play with and buy gifts for,” Haes said. “I may be a little more selfish about my life, so cats are a perfect animal for me.”

Haes’ family cat, Winston, died last October after 15 years together, so he wanted to have a companion in his apartment again.

That’s where a 4-year-old cat named Felix — who had been found jumping between the tops of trucks before she landed on top of a CACC van — stepped into his life.

“She was sweet and came right up to me,” Haes said. “I had a good feeling about her. … [And] I just missed that companionship. It’s just different having that little friend around.”

The Rescue Together event is slated to continue Sunday with six more local shelters joining in the mix at NewCity Lincoln Park, 1457 N. Halsted St., as well as the PAWS Chicago location at 1997 N. Clybourn Ave. and CACC’s Little Village location at 2741 S. Western Ave. Chicago Animal Care and Control will be waiving adoption fees at the event.