Kingston Human Society closing for a week to ease overcrowding issues

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The Kingston Humane Society is closing to the public for the next five days while it deals with “significant capacity issues.”

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Doors will be shut from Sunday to June 2. Scheduled appointments will be honoured and the shelter will continue to offer its pound services to its contracted municipalities.

The animal shelter has been working at more than capacity for over a year, sometimes “at more than twice the 144 animals” the aging facility can hold, according to a media release from the organization.

An influx of stray dogs has forced the shelter to make the decision to stop accepting any surrenders for the time being.

“Intakes of stray dogs have jumped dramatically in the last week to 10 days,” executive director Gord Hunter said in a written statement. “We either have to find a way to reduce our intakes or increase animals going into foster care or forever homes.”

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The shelter needs volunteers to foster or adopt dogs so that they can return to a manageable capacity.

The five-day closure will put a hold not only on surrenders, but also visitations.

“Our visitation traffic has returned to pre-pandemic levels,” Hunter wrote in the statement. “That takes time away from processing adoptions. In combination with an increase in strays and a lack of dog fosters, that means we have a backlog of great dogs that we can’t get into foster care or into forever homes.

“Our list of people waiting to surrender animals seems to grow every day,” Hunter said. “And animal control has brought in nine stray dogs since the weekend. We have to stem the tide of intakes for a few days in order to catch up and get some of these deserving animals out and into loving homes.”