Last year, animal welfare activists were picketing the Sangamon County Animal Shelter and now they are working with it.
“Things are going quite well now,” said Jill Egizii, president of the nonprofit WILD Canine Rescue. “WILD had a very adversarial relationship with the former administrator and it was just an awful, awful environment for the staff. It was just oppressive when you walked into the building.”
Last month, Jeanne Keenan was appointed to head the shelter, where she had been working in an interim capacity since May. The shelter is a division of the Sangamon County Health Department. Keenan previously was in charge of the department’s restaurant inspections.
She replaces longtime shelter director Greg Largent, who was fired, said Andy Van Meter, chair of the Sangamon County Board.
“Within the first six months, she has made a dramatic difference in the lives of the dogs and the lives of the people who are served by Sangamon County,” Egizii said.
Van Meter agreed that the change at the facility has been dramatic.
“Greg was someone who always looked good on paper. The inspection reports when he was director were quite good. But he was not the right person to manage volunteers and a unionized workforce,” said Van Meter.
During Largent’s tenure, the shelter shut down its volunteer program and struggled to remain fully staffed. Today, the volunteer program is active and staff morale has improved, Egizii said.
Adoptions are up and the number of animals euthanized is down since Keenan took over. But the number of animals the shelter is caring for has risen.
During the final quarter of 2022, about 87% of all animals were adopted. During the same period in 2021 that number was 77 %.
“I credit that to local rescue organizations helping us out,” Keenan said.
But demands placed on the facility have also gone up.
“There were 300 more dogs and cats that came in this (past) year than the previous year,” Keenan said. In 2022, the shelter admitted 3,043 pets.
“It’s because of the economy,” she said. “People don’t have enough money to feed their pets, so they are choosing to relinquish them.”
To help pet owners avoid giving up their pets, Keenan started a food pantry at the shelter. She said pet food for it is donated by local retailers.
Like almost all shelters, diseases have periodically swept through the facility. Shelters are particularly vulnerable to outbreaks of disease because the animals live in close proximity and there is a constant influx of strays that may be infected with various diseases.
But Van Meter noted that new steps have been taken to minimize the spread of disease.
“The same firm that cleans the neonatal units at the local hospitals is cleaning the dog kennels,” he said.
Keenan added an isolation room has been created for potentially infectious cats, and pet bowls are being sterilized in a new dishwasher. More importantly, the shelter is back to full staffing.
“We now have six kennel attendants plus our animal care manager,” she said. “So, we have seven people working in the kennels. Before we had two or three.”
“Our staff is growing in confidence and we’re hoping that in the near future we may be able to transfer some responsibilities to our kennel attendants,” Van Meter said. “We look for them to take on some cleaning responsibilities.”
The shortage of veterinarians serving Sangamon County has made it more challenging to care for sick animals at the shelter, Gail O’Neill, Sangamon County Public Health director, said. Two area vets visit the shelter for two to four hours each week.
Scott Reeder, a staff writer for Illinois Times, can be reached at
This article appears in Wedding.
