Pandemic pet surrenders causing problems at Saskatoon shelters

Sask. shelters overrun WATCH: Saskatoon and area animal shelters say they have seen a large number of pets surrendered.

Following a pandemic adoption boom pets are now being turned back over to Saskatoon shelters, sanctuaries, and pounds at an unprecedented rate.

Shelters say they are dealing with an overwhelming amount of dog surrenders according to Fred Dyck, president of the Saskatoon SPCA.

"We have 500 more intakes year-to-date this year than the same time last year. Five hundred animals is a lot of animals. We've been able to adopt 500 animals out, in addition to what we did normally last year. So we are kinda meeting that growth, but its stressing resources," said Dyck.

We All Need a Rescue (WANAR) is a no-kill sanctuary that is chronically stuck at max capacity, something they say has never been this bad, and will take years to even out. Owner Brent Arstall paints a grim picture of what could come.

“Its gonna get worse over the next year. This year will be the worse that we’ve seen. Next year, it’ll start to slow down. Its going to take about five years to get back to how it was prior to COVID. Thousands of dogs, thousands and thousands in this province are going to die this year,” Arstall warned.

Both WANAR and the SPCA call on both the community to provide additional resources to help deal with the intake while things even out, to limit the amount of animals put down or turned away.

The SPCA stresses that those who struggle to care for their pandemic puppies dialogue with them before leaving their dogs.

“We are here to support that person. We know that the single best outcome for that animal will be that owner keeping that animal and giving it a great home. So some dialogue with us, contact us, don’t just look at us like ‘Oh I want to call the SPCA and surrender my animal',” Dyck said.