Pet lovers to the rescue

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Ed and Rebecca Kostro share their home with many rescued dogs, including Carrie. | Brett Roseman~Sun-Times Media

There’s Carrie, who continued to guard her South Side home for months after her family left.

There’s Trucker, who was found some 40 pounds underweight and freezing in a truck yard near 51st Street and Central Avenue.

And there’s Marty, who was spied running along Damen Avenue dragging an enormous chain. He was scavenging for food in garbage cans on a frosty January day.

All three of those dogs, and countless others, were rescued and given a second chance at life and love by a group of caring South Siders who call themselves The Muttley Crew.

They’re just regular people — nurses, teachers, retirees — who go to great lengths and expense to save the animals being tossed about in the ongoing economic storm.

And Ed Kostro thought he’d seen the worst of this kind of thing after Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s much worse now,” he said.

In 2005, Kostro left his home in the Garfield Ridge community and traveled to New Orleans to help the group Best Friends reunite pets with owners.

The author and retired auditor for the Veterans Administration worked tirelessly on the project. It earned him a reputation in the Chicago dog-rescuing community as a guy with a big heart.

When the economy began to tank here, animal lovers turned to him for help.

The first call came in 2008, when Kostro was told about a rat terrier living in a park near Narragansett and Archer.

“The dog was scared to death. Several people had tried to catch him but he kept getting away,” Kostro said. After a month, Kostro finally caught him with a cat trap.

“Once I got him home he was a different dog,” Kostro said. “I took him out of the trap, he peed on my shoes and we became friends.”

Today, Jack lives with Kostro and his wife, Rebecca.

So does Carrie. So does Trucker.

Kostro said he never imagined conditions for pets could get worse than they were after Katrina when so many pets were rounded up and shipped to shelters around the country.

As chaotic as that storm was, it eventually ended so cleanup could begin. The current financial storm has been raging for four years. Four years of home foreclosures, of job losses, of family pets suddenly becoming expendable.

“I think these dumped dogs have it the worst,” Kostro said. “If they were to be taken to a shelter, they would be put down. No one has the money to invest in their recovery.”

Kostro and friends don’t have the money either. But they’ve managed to find it. So far, anyway.

When word gets out that an abandoned pet is roaming the area, Kostro and others, including Katie Campbell, a nurse; Sue Malone, who publishes the Journal and City Newshound newsletter; and Judy Schnur, owner of Pawsitively Heaven Pet Resort in Chicago Ridge, begin looking for a foster home or, better, a forever home.

Pets, Campbell said, should be treated like children. “You’re responsible for them,” she said. “Would you abandon your kids just because times got tough?”

The Muttley Crew is not a nonprofit. It is not soliciting funds.

Asked what society can do to help abandoned animals, Kostro answers, plain and simple:

“Be better pet owners. And better citizens.”

Sun-Times Media