PAWS Chicago's First Ever Angels with Tails Highland Park on Sunday, October 18

WHERE:

Petco - 1616 Deerfield Road, Highland Park, IL 60035

Nearly 20 businesses along Central Avenue

In the heart of Downtown Highland Park between Green Bay Road and 1st Street

WHEN:

Sunday, October 18, 2015 - 12 - 4 p.m.

PAWS Chicago, the city’s largest No Kill humane organization, along with several local shelter and rescue organizations, will bring the faces of Chicagoland’s homeless animals to the Highland Park community for a life-saving, mega adoption event!

The first ever Angels with Tails Highland Park, presented by the Petco Foundation, is an opportunity to stroll the sidewalks and press your nose against storefront windows to experience the joy a pet can bring to your life. PAWS Chicago will showcase adoptable dogs, cats, puppies and kittens in two locations in Highland Park, the Petco at 1616 Deerfield Road and nearly 20 beautiful storefronts and sidewalks along Central Avenue in Downtown Highland Park.

In 2014, PAWS Chicago opened their first satellite adoption center in Highland Park to help find more homes for pets who need them—especially large dogs popular with suburban families—and to bring progressive sheltering practices to a new community of adopters. The North Shore Adoption Center is located in the Petco store at 1616 Deerfield Road, Highland Park.

While this is the first time Angels with Tails has been held in Highland Park, PAWS Chicago launched its inaugural Angels with Tails event in 1998, and has repeated the event on the Gold Coast every year since, celebrating its 18th annual event on May 31, 2015. As Chicago’s first large-scale adoption event, Angels with Tails showcased homeless pets along sidewalks and storefronts along Michigan Avenue and Oak Street. By bringing homeless pets to the forefront of public awareness, many lives were saved that day and it was the beginning of PAWS Chicago’s mission to bring attention about the staggering reality that thousands of homeless pets are needlessly killed each and every year; 42,561 dogs, cats, puppies and kittens were killed in Chicago in 1997 alone.

With the resulting media attention and public awareness, PAWS Chicago has continued to bring No Kill solutions forward and the Chicago community has come together to change the tragic reality with incredible results. The number of pets euthanized has decreased by 77%, to fewer than 10,000 pets killed in Chicago in 2014. While there is still work to do to save more animals, our community has come a long way.