When Pets Become Inconvenient: The Growing Crisis of Animal Abandonment

it follow rescue and i he just started with me for advice yes okay

he was following them so i guess no what happened was he actually ended up with somebody who dumped the dog then she was outed they found out who she was yeah then they they(...) so then he ends up at the police station last night with her i don't know if he i don't think he gave the dog back she's claiming she has all the time he doesn't remember dropping their dog off what was she(...) she had gray hair so(...) they're saying some of them are saying well maybe she does he's saying that she shouldn't have the dog period so i guess he didn't give it back and he said they can charge they can do(...) but she only the dog does she want to surrender so i don't she surrendered it on the pot on the point and sometimes we get in those situations where i say okay but we need legal surrender signed by the owner that says i can surrender because they no longer can take care of it there are a lot of people out there who have um you know aging parents that have animals they're not being cared for because they don't have the ability any they have dementia they have you know health issues that prevent them from caring for the property yeah but we're also having dumping so there's a little black dog it was dumped that was witnessed and dumped at the south end and our dogs are on it they're trying to get it just like a little lap dog little black like a terrier type dog and um you know people either dumping them because they're(...) too expensive and they have no money to go to a vet and that's why our east village and the hospital again isn't is a good option

so anyways um yeah so that's why we're getting like a lot of dumpings because people uh like say two ways are coming in one people are intentionally doing it because they feel they can't they don't have the money to go work for vet bills the other people are just dumping because they've called shelters and every shelter in the country is full and the reason every shelter in the country yeah why are they full is because everybody was breeding their dogs during covid and then everybody dumped their dogs and then the people didn't there was there was the two people the two groups like the people who who decided after covid oh whoops yeah it was a mistake here you go i just need to get rid(...) the other people were oh i make good money breeding my dogs and we keep doing it only the problem was it's like a perfect storm they both came together when we get out of surrenders plus the increased breeding you end up in a disaster which is what we're living when are we going to stop hearing the covid word about stuff for us 15 years 15 you think 15 years we will so all these animals that were born during covid you have two three years of covid they literally people bred bred their animals repeatedly to make money yeah so you have two or three years worth of mass breeding(...) those dogs only 10 to 15 years so where are they going to go when you have now tens of thousands of animals that need that people want to surrender(...) there's no where there's no place built for that many animals euthanizing in the big centers has been wild thousands of animals being euthanized um in our in our province there's nowhere left for them to go so people call and say hi i'd like to surrender my dog for whatever reason yeah and most times not fixed not approximated like 90 percent of phones they got them in the last couple of years and they're all giving them up they didn't socialize them didn't do anything and now their problem dogs well now as our whole society's disposal they don't want to deal with their problem they just want somebody else take their problem off and it's saving to them then i become judgmental this word of judgmental all the time well somebody's got to tell them right i'm sorry i i don't sugarcoat it and you know i'm going to be a little blunt and you should like this is enough with these people who oh i don't want it now it's your role then we're no longer having it's not as cute as it was absolutely i got free off the internet or it paid someone two three hundred bucks and then you say but you didn't vaccinate or neuter it now mike the charity has to pay for all that so we'd like a small portion of a surrender fee to help offset that cost then they get all mad and upset because it's no more good to them right so why should i pay to get rid of something so that's when they turn around they'll dump it somewhere or like people have to think we're not like just an unlimited checkbook like you can't just we don't have the money tree in the backyard we wish we did we did and you know so i mean we have bills to pay folks if we don't pay the bills the place doesn't operate so you know this is why after 25 years jill so it still doesn't have a paycheck because there's just no money to pay at the end of the week to even think about a paycheck for me because you know i'm already paying a group of people at the shelter too and i've had to increase my labor there because our volume of animals is through the roof i've got them i've converted cat rooms to dog rooms that i thought would be a temporary conversion two years ago because we thought covid dogs would only last a couple of years the reality is we have tens of thousands of dogs homeless and there's nowhere for them to go so what do people need to do in order to help curb this spay your dogs and please hang on to your dogs some of the calls that we get and i just shake my head because(...) well you know we no longer have time you know you don't make time you know you don't make that my mother was a single mom three kids two dogs to get we all took it we took their duties this business said well i'm gonna have a baby so i need to get rid of my animals(...) no i don't get you it's on there all the time i'm i or you know i uh what what are they doing they want to get rid of their baby i have one the other day an eight or nine year old dog says well i just don't have the time for him i thought wow and eight and a year old dog you're pretty low energy at that point yeah you don't have time for that what do you have time for it's about commitment really is what it comes to when it's no longer convenient and um you know no i'm not taking your kids it's(...) true what do you do with your kids you know you don't have time for that it's true what do you do with your kids you work it out you make it work you commit to it but these days it's a different society than it even was 25 years ago when i started oh it's a little different so it's oh it's more than a little different and like say the commitment to training or long term it's just not there everybody gets them queued off the internet like i say the number one(...) dog during covid was bullies the number two was pyrenees those are the top two bred dogs and drink covid yeah guess what the top two surrenders are today uh bullies and pyrenees absolutely what's sad about the pyrenees is a lot of them have now because they were in the wrong environments yeah and they're they have innate qualities that make them a dog not good for a little apartment with a couple little kids they need space and now they get determined to be unsafe dogs and they're being euthanized i came and tell you how many have been euthanized this year in a fridge my heart because those dogs were just in the wrong home i don't have room to take them anymore i know someone who had to give up their pyrenees dog for uh for no they had to give it up they went to a good home with uh with the large yard yeah and they need to yeah and but like people need to talk like it seems like this these days getting a puppy is like getting a new handbag you know like a person and puppy today and then six months later like if you see how many are hunters from underline between six and twelve months old it's ridiculous or some people get a puppy and literally if we're on the net and people i think are even to put things on that now because the backlash is like well that was really stupid right like something gets a puppy and a week later goes yeah so we both work full-time we realize we don't have time for a puppy they realized they realized like a week after the other puppy or two weeks after or a month later well did you not think about what the time commitment was prior to and i mean i could be a complainer but folks like when you listen to it day in day out on the phone lines and all the reasons and i'll say to people well did you think about this did you think about you know that's a habit that can be worked with well i don't want to do that okay i don't want to pay for a trainer i don't want it then what'd you get a dog for right yeah and and so it's so sad because so many animals are ending up dumped we you know on the south end right now like if you are sitting here in sepery there's a little black dog somebody saw the guy dump the dog and and and drive off yeah drive off(...) and that's happening you know common we there's people we've dealt with on outlying roads in sepery and in the outlying areas that we've dealt with for years simply because of dumping we only know them because they're on at the end of a country road and everything's taken down the dog or cat there and we've dealt with those people repeatedly over the years and develop relationships with them are there people that live there and yeah take the dog and then try to bring it in well a lot of the time people go down the country roads and go well they have a farm right so they must like animals right so i'll just dump my dog or my cat(...) right because they're a farm they'll take it but farms are like no we already have our own animals yeah we don't need more animals and then you know so so dumping is is huge right now that's a huge problem in our city and and i think you saw you mentioned about timmons last night shawn yeah with timmons cute and you know they get somebody got her a video dumping a dog and then they identified her and then she's down at police station saying well i have dementia so i didn't know and that could be a very valid reason and there's a lot of seniors out there right now that are struggling to care for animals that they did get in the last five six years they got them as seniors we're getting calls for that sometimes i have dementia but i don't i don't know when it's not selective okay selective(...) sometimes yeah no people actually have those conditions and it does it raise concerns for they're not able to care for the pets those are legitimate um surrenders and and then we have what we call like i i i always say there's legitimate surrenders people with illnesses have come down unexpected midlife didn't expect to get cancer didn't expect to get so those are absolutely you know those are we're happy to help in those you know you get the people who just went out on the net and bought a puppy and then six months later you want to dump it just why i don't have time well you know that's why we charge surrender fee because you're you're and half the time you can't be taken anymore we're so full(...) i don't have anywhere in my room so again spay your pets and spay and neuter and there's laws so here's the thing about abandonment even when you catch them it is against the law to abandon your pet and this is where we say about the ministry and there's just nothing being done there are laws around abandonment and and it's a chargeable offense the provincial animal welfare act so where's the accountability there's zero charges i've never in my 29 years heard of a charge for abandonment i've never heard of a charge being laid and yeah we did every every month in the city of sudbury we get a call on the first or second of the month landlords oh really they evicted people yeah people just moved away didn't even have to be evicted they left their animals they leave them behind dogs cats and it's sad some of them have already passed some have been left for like three periods of time so yeah it's it's very sad what's going on people need to realize that animals are a party family and they're a lifetime commitment and that's you know this people complain about our criteria when people call to adopt a dog from us or a cat but there's a reason for the criteria it's not being judgmental i know people that have complained against the criteria exactly but then they go and get it elsewhere yes and that's fine i'd say a big percentage of those people again those are not going to be long-term people we see it by their history how they cared for their previous pets or you know people who have you know young people they get into an apartment in a matter of a couple of weeks then the new girl from the boyfriend get together now we're gonna get some pets and when the relationship breaks up that don't laugh no i know it happens you know often relationships don't last very long yeah especially in the younger generation so there's lots of those calls every month like people should just come sit on our phone lines we invite people to volunteer come sit on our phone lines and and just help out the actual yeah put your you know we've got the pulse on the city here we know what's going on because we hear it every day on our lines people don't know what's going on they really don't 99% of people who can comment online have no idea what's going on but if you grant it you don't understand it's easy to comment online yes you can just and but like say if you really want to know what goes on in our city come sit on our phone lines volunteer we're always volunteers on our on our phone line and come volunteer and see what you what you see what you learn you might it's an education that's for sure whether you want it or not it's it's it's not always good on the other end of the line joe from pet save once again words of wisdom(...) see you soon hang(...)

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