'Pets in Peril' series touches readers, nets contributions

What ever happened to Bethany?

That was the question on many readers minds after this week's Pets in Peril series featured a photo of the small, mixed-breed dog looking forlorn in a downstate pound.

"Let everyone know she got adopted," Sally Matay, president of Illinois Animal Rescue, said. The group helps transport dogs and cats from high-kill pounds downstate to no-kill shelters, many in the suburbs.

The series tracked volunteers as they saved and transported animals from Franklin County Animal Control in downstate Benton, about 300 miles south of Chicago, to suburban shelters where they were adopted.

Since the series ran, readers have made dozens of comments at dailyherald.com and by e-mail, with Bethany on the minds of many.

While Bethany was left behind when the newspaper documented a trip of more than 50 animals in November, she did make a transport soon after and she has since been adopted, Matay said. Otherwise, Bethany would have been euthanized due to the pound's space constraints, she said.

Since the series ran, the group has received calls from about 100 people wanting to help transport animals, Matay said.

The group's Web site, illinoisanimalrescue.org, has received more than 2,000 hits in the last two days. The average per month previously was about 1,000, she said.

The group still needs money for gas to transport the animals and for medical testing, but the $500 donated since the series came out will help, she said.

However, fewer animals are being transported out of Franklin County Animal Control, where Bethany was staying, since Dottie Darr, who coordinated the transports, couldn't continue paying the more than $150 gas bill for each trip, Matay said. Transports had been running about twice a week.

Instead of transporting between 100 and 150 animals per month from that pound, the rate currently is down to about 40 a month, she said.

The Franklin County pound, which burned down in an overnight electrical fire while the newspaper was visiting to observe how the pet pipeline works, received about $1,800 this week in donations, up from the average amount of about $150, said Franklin County Pound Director Jarrett Broy.

But the money has not gone toward transporting pets to the suburbs, since that expense has always been undertaken by volunteers like herself, Darr said.

Broy said the money would likely be used for medicine.

"We are going to use it to help the animals," Broy said. "A lot of them need medical care."