Helping Hounds Dog Rescue — Local services in Town of Cicero

First and foremost, I have been a loyal supporter of this organization for years, and am disappointed to write this review after having the worst experience. They are AMAZING with animals and TOTAL opposite to humans. I adopted our dog there recently and if we didn't love her the minute we met her, I would have cut ties. When we picked up Lucy, in April we were advised that she might not get a spay appointment until Sept/Oct, so when we received a letter advising us she could be spayed on June 30th, we were ecstatic, because that meant we could finalize the adoption! After receiving the letter, I received a voicemail message that the spay appt was moved to a new date, I called to speak to somebody and when they gave me the date, it was a Sunday, and she had to be there at 7:30am. I said a Sunday? Yes, they said as Vet's are 'fitting us in' I said I have an appointment on the 30th, can't I keep that? I was told No, I was confused...I talked it over with my husband and he agreed Sunday wouldn't work, we had prior commitments, now I had been in email correspondence with Lisa, as the dog was having issues with her stool, and I felt needed testing. I advised her Sunday wouldn't work, and asked to keep the 30th, she was extremely rude (emails to prove it) and said No, told me to call in if I wanted to discuss. I did. That experience made the situation worse, I spoke to Kathy, and didn't realize it was her until after our conversation, and was shocked to realize she was the Director. The discussion was extremely heated. I told her I didn't request for different day, and couldn't they find a different dog to fill the spot so I could keep the 30th, She yelled at me, she told me if I 'refused to take the dog to the appt she would come get the dog', she said I must be 'not aware there is a pandemic and vet's are overwhelmed' she told me I wasn't taking care of the dog if I didn't bring her to appt, it got really ugly. The funny part is I was only asking to keep an appointment that THEY set to begin with, I wasn't asking for anything over the top, she then told me, 'if I had asked nicely she would have considered it'. I mean WOW! I then formulated correspondence to the Board of Directors and shared the emails as well as my experience, I did receive a call from Joe. The call went good, he advised me 'the date was no longer available' that is why it was changed. I told him, NOBODY said that, and I thought two things, it isn't true or somebody is lying. I was right. I called the original vet and 'confirmed' Lucy's appointment, and yes it was still on the calendar. I was livid. I called Joe, advised him of my findings and he would 'get back to me'. My conversation with Joe was very open and honest, I have worked in customer service and sales for 20 years. NEVER would a person with a Director title speak to anybody like she spoke to me, and he advised me it wasn't the first time and she has had other complaints. Joe came back later that day to advise me that the appointment was still listed, but I STILL couldn't have that date. Nobody lied, he said, which was a lie, and that even though they have many dogs that could fill the sooner date, it wasn't going to change. I will say I was extremely surprised. Again, I was only asking for the original appointment to be the appointment she got spayed. That's it. I told him, if they needed the adoption fee sooner I would be happy to pay it.... I would never deal with them again, and I wouldn't recommend them until their management team is restructured. The Board of Directors should consider the families/clients/customers as a priority, they are the ones who are saving these animals and show a little compassion...

I've adopted 6 dogs from rescue organizations over the past 40 years (Yup, I'm that old and they usually live between 10 and 19 years old) and this is by far, one of the best places I have dealt with. We'd been looking for a dog since January when our 19 year old miniature pinscher died. We found there are many foster homes with dogs but you have to set up an appointment and go visit and usually there are only a few dogs. Other shelters near us mostly have big dogs like pit mixes which are great but we have a chihuahua so finding smaller dogs was very hard. The guidelines from Helping Hounds were laid out. I put through my application on a Tuesday and called to make sure everything was ok on Wednesday. When they let me know that my reference had not called back, I called her and she called them. They had already called my Vet (I let the vet know they would get a call and that it was ok to give them my information). On Thursday, my son, daughter, and our old chihuahua drove 60 miles to see the Helping Hounds dogs. First off, the place was clean and the dogs looked happy. I have been in many shelters both in New York and in Virginia and many are smelly and the dogs look unhappy so Helping Hounds was already a step ahead. We introduced ourselves. They checked our application which was complete and then we were allowed to check out the dogs. Now this makes sense to me because why freak out the dogs with people poking at them if the people don't have the application done to adopt the dog? We let the staff know which dogs we were interested in and one at a time, they brought them outside and we sat with them and introduced them to the chihuahua. The first one did not work out but the second dog they brought outside, connected with everyone. After 30 minutes, we brought her back in and started the paperwork. When we were all done, they gave us a packet which included a bunch of free stuff we were able to get for our new dog from Petco right down the street. We also could have used a free training session if we lived closer.

Our new dog is a great addition to our family and we know it takes months for rescue pups to settle in and it costs money to keep them healthy (about $75 a month on average in addition to food). So maybe this is more than you need to know from a review but from my past experience, this was a great place. Don't let one unhelpful staff person stop you from checking them out. Follow the guidelines and you'll be fine. If you think you should be able to walk in, pick out a dog and walk out with it with no background check, maybe you shouldn't be getting a...

They kept leading us on. They told us to visit the pets, take them for walk, bring the family in. I Don't recommend this at all. It took them over 2 weeks to process our paperwork then when they did come to find out they got the wrong information from our Vet. This was an error on our vets behalf. We told them the information is not correct but they claim there is nothing they can do until we take care of the vet information. So we went and talked to our Vet to get any information fixed. Meanwhile we all are falling in love with 2 different dog. We have been looking for a dog for a couple months now and are very particular on what we want and feel they will work well with our family. This was our 4th Shelter and all the others didn't have what we are looking for, so when they had 2 dogs we got excited that at least one will still be available. Then once we got the vet information taken care 2 days later. They told us well "we can't get a hold of your references. We left them both a voice mail." Come to find out that was not true. Both of them said they had no voice mails. So I called my references right from their office to have them talk with them. We are thinking finally we are all set...Nope! Because of the Misinformation from the vet they said they have to send our information to the higher up person. Then before they get back to us 4 days later both dogs have been adopted. So I have to tell my kids we are back on the hunt. It was an awful experiences and I would not recommend them to anyone unless you have never had a pet before. In the end they denied us because of they animals we had in the past. We have taken in strays, We have have pets with medical needs that we maintained until the end. Cat Leukemia and Another with a urinary track infections almost every other month. We gave 2 of our pets away because they didn't work out with our other pets. 1 Cat went to a home 2 houses down because she didn't get along with our other cat or dog. Had 1 dog a pure breed Husky that we gave to a friend because we were having trouble containing the escape artist and he was just to high energy for our lives at the time. Both went to a great home and not a shelter nor would we have taken them to a shelter. I guess that was too irresponsible for us to get a dog from a shelter 6 years later.

If I have to say something good it would be that the facility does seem clean and is not have the "jail" feel that some...