Displaced Niles animal shelter coming to Des Plaines

An animal shelter left without a home after a school bus crashed into its Niles facility will open a new location in Des Plaines.

Wright Way Rescue will be moving into the former Des Plaines Family Pet Clinic at 965 Rand Road, thanks to a local veterinarian who is letting the shelter use the building for free until his lease expires there in August 2014.

Dr. Rajinder Kumar moved his business to a larger facility in Mount Prospect and renamed it Randhurst Animal Hospital but still has a lease for his old Des Plaines location.

After the school bus struck Wright Way Rescue's building Oct. 2 on Touhy Avenue in Niles, volunteers began to distribute fliers asking for donations to build a new Wright Way facility.

One of the volunteers dropped off a flier at Kumar's clinic in Mount Prospect, spurring him to provide the shelter with the remaining time on his Des Plaines lease.

“They put the flier in our clinic,” Kumar said. “I saw the flier and I gave them a call.”

Kumar said he helped the staff members at Wright Way secure city permits, which will allow them to move into the new facility this week.

He says though the pet shelter has been without a permanent home since the bus crash, it has put animals in foster homes and continued to do adoptions from local Petco store locations.