Calgary animal shelters overwhelmed with pets, dogs, due to pandemic and housing

Animal shelters in Calgary and surrounding areas are being inundated with pets, especially dogs, due to the cost of living and the housing crisis.

On top of that, people who adopted during the pandemic continue to give up their animals because they didn’t realize the implications of owning an animal.

Sally Johnston, associate director of community services with the Calgary Humane Society, says they are dealing with so many people looking to give up their dogs, they can’t keep up with them all.

“We are seeing quite an uptick in the need for surrender and, particularly, those around any sort of economic reasons,” she told CityNews.

“We’ve seen an increase in people needing to surrender because they can’t afford the animal, or they can’t afford the medical care of the animal, or they’re having landlord issues and moving or — worse yet — a lot of people are facing that they don’t have a home or they’re not able to obtain pet housing. We’ve seen increases in both of those.”

She says the reason for pet surrenders “species-wide” is that people cannot afford the animal.

Watch: Calgary animal shelters still feeling lingering pandemic effects

The largest increase in surrenders comes from those not having “pet housing,” which went from 28 in 2022 to 63 this year.

Meanwhile, Johnston says dogs are also being surrendered due to “behavioural reasons.”

“So that might be from anywhere from they’re quite aggressive, whether it’s to people or to other animals, or there’s just behaviour issues in general, whether that’s separation anxiety or severe reactivity,” she said.

“We are facing quite an increase in that and seeing that a lot more prevalent in the dogs that we are receiving into the Calgary Humane Society.”

She says the dog waitlist is in the “hundreds,” with around 100 to 150 households that need to surrender their dog.

“We work through that as quickly as we possibly can. But the rate at which we are adding people to that waitlist is quicker than we’re able to take them in,” Johnston said.

Volunteers for fostering needed

She says general intake is up, but renovations to the building have allowed them to support more animals than they could in 2022.

“In general, the reasons that we’re seeing animals needing to be surrendered for has shifted a little bit, and it’s it is kind of focusing around some of these changes that I think we’ve seen as a result of the pandemic,” Johnston said.

Johnston says they do what they can for the owners who can wait, including offering classes for behavioural problems like separation anxiety.

She says it would help a great deal if more people would volunteer to be foster homes for the animals.

If people can’t do that, she hopes they can donate funds or supplies.