Top 10 Reasons Ottawa Needs a New Animal Shelter
- The current shelter is 40 years old and is in poor condition.
- We are bursting at the seams, caring for over 11,000 animals in a shelter designed to care for 2,500.
- Overcrowding leads to stress on animals, volunteers and staff.
- Stress and poor ventilation lead to chronic spread of disease, despite our best efforts.
- Lack of suitable space means we cannot isolate animals that do become sick.
- The facility is depressing, and not adoption friendly.
- Our emergency and investigations services are housed in an old school portable.
- Our tiny veterinary clinic limits the number of sterilizations and life-saving surgeries we can perform.
- Lack of space severely limits our educational and community programs.
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Ottawa needs a green shelter to meet the future needs of our community and its animal companions.
Visit our website for more details about our community’s need for new shelter.
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Community Comes Together for the Animals at Bruce Pit
 Tomorrow’s animals have a great friend in Rachel Armstrong, who, along with her family and friends, organized a community dog fair at Bruce Pit at the end of May.
An astounding 350 people attended the event which included dog contests of all kinds, and featured donated and homemade items available for sale. The event was a tremendous success (despite hail storms that hit in the early afternoon!) raising over $1,400 to create a brighter future for Ottawa’s animals.
If you would like to host an event for the animals, please contact Anna Silverman at 613-725-3166 ext. 279 or annas@ottawahumane.ca |
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Remembering Morgan... Forever
 When the Steffensen/Grimes family lost their beloved black lab Morgan in May they were devastated. “Our home has fundamentally changed, and we all feel the ever-present void and emptiness that now seems to permeate our everyday lives. We miss him terribly. Morgan was a joy to have and no words can properly convey all the times where Morgan provided us with happiness, warmth and comfort,” writes Isabella Steffensen, who along with her new husband Michael Grimes, adopted Morgan from the OHS in 1995.
As a way to deal with their loss and to commemorate the Morgan’s life and their time with him, the family felt that a gift to the Breaking Ground Building Campaign was the perfect choice. “I was very excited to be able to have dog run named after him, reminding me of the first time that we were brought together. I also wanted something good to come from his passing, something that would help other dogs the way he had been helped. I was especially thrilled that the new facility would help prevent the spread of disease, which had almost claimed Morgan’s life as a pup.”
Read Morgan’s full story on our website. |
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Solicitor Kits Available
Many of you who care about the future of Ottawa’s animals have requested help in soliciting gifts from friends, neighbours and co-workers. To assist, we have developed a solicitor’s kit full of information, tips and pledge envelopes. To obtain your kit, please contact Aaron Robinson at 613-725-3166 ext. 254 or aaronr@ottawahumane.ca.
Introducing: George Miers
Since an animal shelter design is a very specialized discipline, in order to ensure that we get everything right for Ottawa’s animals, the OHS has contracted with George Miers as consulting architect on our building project.
Mr. Miers visited the OHS at the end of May to meet with staff about the animals' requirements and to review and revise our now four-year -old needs assessment. Mr. Miers will be providing our local architects with a detailed schematic — or floor plan — from which the working drawings will be created.
Mr. Miers was also the consulting architect on both Winnipeg and Edmonton Humane Societies’ successful building projects.
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