Dog population boom, negligent owners overload Iqaluit’s humane society

This dog waits for a new owner in the Iqaluit humane society shelter. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE IQALUIT HUMANE SOCIETY)

Too many dogs and too few responsible dog owners: that pretty much sums up the challenge faced on a daily basis by Iqaluit’s humane society.

Its volunteers are constantly busy dealing with the city’s booming dog population, said Janelle Kennedy, the humane society’s president.

The humane society provides updates on its Facebook page about recent adoptions, pets in their new “forever” homes,” and other animals, including cats, that are up for adoption.

But there are never enough new owners ready to step forward.

So, every week, the humane society sends between two and six dogs south on a weekly “dog run.”

“That’s a lot,” Kennedy said.

“It’s really out of control,” she added, about Iqaluit’s dog overpopulation problem.

Sometimes it turns out that dogs that have been sent south already have owners in Iqaluit — who usually don’t start even looking for their dog until eight or nine weeks after the dog has gone to the humane society’s shelter.

“It’s a very uncomfortable situation,” Kennedy said.

To keep the dog population under control, the volunteer-run organization has held a few spay or neuter lotteries, open to all pet owners in Iqaluit.

In the last lottery, 35 animals were spayed or neutered.

But to hold these types of events, the humane society has to “do a lot of work fundraising,” Kennedy said

In some cases, the society has also paid for spaying and neutering operations, which cost just under $200, offering these to pet owners who say they can’t afford it.

But all too often, people in Iqaluit take dogs home and then end up giving them to the shelter because the place they live in no longer allows pets.

And other people simply like having puppies around, as opposed to older dogs. Once their dogs reach maturity, they are given away and the same owner will get a puppy to take the older dog’s place.

“The reality is that puppies are a lot of work,” Kennedy said, who often takes dogs into foster care.

The humane society also often gets calls from people asking for help to find a puppy-sitter. Those are the types of calls the humane society doesn’t have time to deal with, Kennedy said.

The humane society even received a call this past winter about a puppy that was frozen to a sewage pipe. “We had to go and unstick it,” she said.

“We’re just a bunch of volunteers trying to give an animal a second chance,” Kennedy said of the 100 volunteers that work in the human society.

People don’t always realize how much these volunteers work, she said.

“They’d miss us if we were gone,” Kennedy said.