A sharp spike in the number of dogs at the Winnipeg Animal Services shelter is prompting calls for the public to help provide more permanent homes.
The shelter’s population surged to 48 dogs on Oct. 5, far beyond its optimum capacity of about 20, said Jennifer Harrower, the city’s acting general manager of animal services.
“Forty-eight is probably pretty close to the highest (we’ve had),” said Harrower.
The high demand recently led the city to hold an adoption sale for dogs older than four months of age, reducing that charge from $272.40 to $183.75 between Oct. 6 and 13. The fee for puppies remained at $353.85. The prices include some basic shots, spay/neuter, a microchip and a one-year licence.
Following the sale, the number of dogs dropped to 30 by Tuesday morning. However, that still exceeds the number associated with the best quality of care, as does the roughly 30 to 35 dogs at a time the city-operated shelter has housed for most of the last two to three years, said Harrower.
“The sanitizing of the building and the basic care for the dogs is never missed.… It’s the enrichment and the training and getting them out of the kennels and spending time with our staff, that’s where we’re starting to miss (out),” she said.
Harrower said the city does not euthanize dogs due to capacity concerns.
The municipal agency has had to greatly limit some past programs due to the surge in demand. For example, it previously helped with adoptions of dogs from remote northern communities, but that now happens only in rare, isolated cases, she said.
People who purchased pets during the pandemic but decided to surrender them once normal activities outside the home resumed continue to fuel the increased demands on shelters, she said.
“I think during COVID times, everybody got a dog. And my assumption is since (the pandemic ended), life’s been kind of opening back up, that’s kind of when we felt (the demand),” she said.
Winnipeg Animal Services cares for dogs and exotic animals but the surge in numbers is specific to dogs, she said.
The Winnipeg Humane Society is also struggling to keep up with the number of dogs coming in, with 47 dogs and puppies in total, as of Tuesday, when it would also be more suited to handle about 20, said Audrey Barnabe, manager of shelter flow.
“We would prefer to keep that number down. The problem right now is our holding space. We have adoption space for the dogs and puppies and no room in holding to take in more,” Barnabe said.
“There’s a bit of a bottleneck with animals awaiting spay-and-neuter surgery and vet care.”
Another 25 dogs and puppies were cared for through the WHS foster program, she said.
Barnabe also linked the surge in dogs needing shelter to COVID fallout, as well as the rising cost of caring for a pet.
“We’re still suffering from the effects of COVID… (and) we do get a lot of surrenders because people can’t afford to feed their animals anymore or they can’t afford vet care,” she said.
The Humane Society had 461 animals in its care Tuesday, including 240 in its shelter, 206 at foster sites and 15 in satellite adoption centres. The total included 166 cats and kittens in the shelter and another 175 cats and kittens in foster placements.
The WHS said the cat numbers are unusually high, though the average number varies widely.
Barnabe said dogs continue to get “excellent” care at their shelter but get less outdoor time when the numbers increase, while more foster homes are needed for newborn puppies and kittens, as well as large dogs.
She said the humane society can’t discuss how much of the demand is linked to 137 dogs seized from a home north of Winnipeg in August, due to a provincial investigation into their treatment.
Barnabe urged people struggling with pet ownership to reach out to the humane society for help in keeping them.
“We are really into providing that (support) for people so their animals don’t have to come into the shelter,” she said.
Coun. Vivian Santos, chairwoman of council’s community services committee, urged Winnipeggers to adopt pets from shelters, instead of buying them from puppy mills and online ads, to help address the issue.
She said residents should also license their pets.
“When we’re seeing a big surge of the animals coming in, we can’t even locate (many of) their original owners,” said Santos (Point Douglas).
The councillor said Winnipeg Animal Services is “maximizing” its current space and there has not been a formal request for a larger facility. She said some discussions have occurred about the potential to expand spaying and neutering capacity.
joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca
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Joyanne Pursaga
Reporter
Joyanne is city hall reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. A reporter since 2004, she began covering politics exclusively in 2012, writing on city hall and the Manitoba Legislature for the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in early 2020. Read more about Joyanne.
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