After nearly four years of operating at or over capacity, Lethbridge’s animal shelter is getting some relief as intake numbers drop even as shelters across the rest of Alberta continue to face overwhelming demand. “We are definitely starting to see a return to sort of the pre-pandemic type numbers,” said Skylar Plourde, director of enforcement with Community Animal Services. During the pandemic, Plourde says there was an increased interest in pet adoptions with many people working and staying home during restrictions. “However, that created this other issue of more backyard breeding and things like that were happening during that time, so when restrictions ended in 2022, we began to see a massive intake of animals,” Plourde explained. “The primary issue we were experiencing was animals not being claimed. We were picking up stray animals; there were animals coming into the shelter that weren’t being claimed and they’d go up for adoption and because there was less interest in adoption they would sit and hold up a kennel space for like hundreds of days on average.” Plourde says that led the shelter to reach its capacity and turn pets away or try and find other animal rescue groups to assist. “From 2022 through until the end of 2025 we had to close or suspend intake of found or stray animals at least one sometimes twice a year in those few years,” he said. “Hopefully, by the end of 2026, this will be the first year in that time period where we have not had to suspend or stop intakes.” The shelter is currently operating at a 40 per cent capacity. “We are sort of an enigma to a lot of things that happen in the rest of the province,” Plourde said. “Sometimes we’re sort of late to the game, but in other areas were early and I’m hoping for us that’s this and that the rest of the province and the rest of the country will start to see the same sort of shift that we’re seeing.” But the Lethbridge Animal Shelter doesn’t directly deal with owner surrenders, which Plourde says could be why demand for other animal rescue organizations remains high. “We’re not seeing an overall drop in demand for shelter services across Alberta,” said Leanne Niblock, who is the Alberta SPCA’s executive director. “While intake levels can vary from community to community, we continue to hear from shelters that they are operating at or beyond capacity.” Niblock says while the Alberta SPCA shelters animals across the province, they don’t operate a physical animal shelter, so their perspective comes from what they’re hearing from animal welfare organizations and communities across Alberta. “The number of calls we receive regarding animals in distress remains high,” Niblock said. While the Lethbridge shelter is seeing a reduction in intakes related to the pandemic, Plourde says other pressures are emerging. “We are seeing a bit of an uptick in animals being abandoned during housing issues,” he said. “Whether that was always happening we just couldn’t identify it and now we can, it’s hard to say.” “We’re getting a lot of calls from rental agencies or pet owners looking for support because they have no where to go with their pets.” In 2025, the City of Lethbridge updated its animal care and control bylaw to help with animal control across the city. Households are restricted to a maximum of six adult cats, voluntary licensing for pets, and stricter penalties were introduced in the bylaw. Plourde feels that has resulted in more animals being tagged and microchipped. “We’re getting less calls for (stray dogs and cats as) the officers to deal with those types of things,” Plourde said. “Hopefully that means there is a growing amount of responsible pet ownership which is ultimately what we really want.”
