Ottawa Humane Society Urges Pet Owners to Prepare for COVID-19, Temporarily Limits Shelter Intake to Ensure Neediest Animals Receive Care

March 17, 2020 — The Ottawa Humane Society (OHS) is reminding pet owners that they should have an emergency plan in place for their pets, whether or not they are diagnosed with COVID-19.

“Sometimes when preparing for emergency situations like a pandemic, people forget to make a plan for their pets,” said OHS President & CEO, Bruce Roney. “We want to remind the community that it’s something they should have in place before they need to use it.”

There are several key steps pet owners should take to ensure the safety and wellbeing of their pet in the case that they become incapacitated from doing so:

• Pet owners should be making emergency plans for their pets, including ensuring that they have adequate food and supplies for them for at least a couple of weeks, as well as an emergency care plan should they not be able to care for their pets.
• If pet owners don’t have emergency pet care available, they should find out now who their neighbour is and ask if they might help in an emergency, contact their veterinarian, a local boarding kennel or a member of their community association, or talk to a family member.
• If a pet owner finds them self in an urgent situation right now and has no one to help, they should contact the OHS to discuss their options. The OHS does not provide transportation services or offer pet boarding.

COVID-19 has also posed an unprecedented challenge to animal shelters like the OHS, stretching available staffing resources thin while needing to provide the same standard of care to the animals.

To ensure the OHS can prioritize emergency situations and help the neediest animals first, the OHS will only accept the surrender of companion animals in urgent situations. It will review its ability to take other pets beginning April 13.

Further, the OHS is asking Ottawa residents not to bring healthy, stray animals to the shelter at this time. Stray dogs should be reported to the City at 311. Residents are asked to complete online “found” reports on the OHS website for healthy, stray cats. Injured or ill stray animals should continue to be brought to the OHS.

“It’s extremely important for us to be able to maintain the level of care we provide our animals and be able to respond to emergency situations,” said OHS Director: Operations, Sharon Miko. “Temporarily limiting our intake is an important, albeit difficult step for us to ensure we’re able to do so.”

The move to restrict animal intake comes as part of a number of major steps the OHS is taking to weather the COVID-19 pandemic. Those measures can be found at: www.ottawahumane.ca/COVID-19/.

Media Contact
Ottawa Humane Society
Will Wuehr, Manager: Communications
willw@ottawahumane.ca
www.ottawahumane.ca