Peterborough and area animal shelters face capacity crunch

Animal shelters in Peterborough, Northumberland County and Kawartha Lakes have all reported being over capacity with the number of animals up for adoption.

Animal shelters throughout the Peterborough, Ont., area are experiencing capacity crunches with the number of animals waiting to be adopted.

At the Peterborough Humane Society, executive director Shawn Morey says the shelter is over capacity and can’t accept any more animals.

“We have 140 animals in our building right now — all different stages,” he said. “Some are up for adoptions, some in our care.”

It’s a similar situation at the Northumberland Humane Society based in Cobourg, which had to close.

“We are overloaded,” executive director Henny Venus told Global News in late June. “We are bursting out of the seams at our shelter. We had to close the shelter for at least a month and it was a very difficult decision to make. But with no space physically anymore to have good animal care, we had to make a decision and say, ‘We have no space at the moment.”

Further complicating the issue was an upper respiratory outbreak among the shelter’s cat population earlier this month, prompting a closure of the cat adoption room for public viewing. Appointments must be booked in advance.

In Lindsay, the Humane Society of Kawartha Lakes has also paused animal acceptances.

“Unfortunately, our shelter is nearly at full capacity, requiring us to pause on accepting animal surrenders at this time,” the shelter stated on Wednesday. “Please call us if you have found a stray animal and we will do what we can to assist. Emergency situations will continue to be the highest level of priority.”