A SCOTTISH Dogs Trust centre is seeing more pets come into their care “than ever before” and warns that it is only expected to get worse in the winter months.
It comes after a recent YouGov survey showed that 43% of the Scots are finding it increasingly difficult to meet all of their dog’s needs.
This year also saw an all-time-high in calls to Dogs Trust from owners asking about their handover service, with almost 5000 enquiries across the UK in August alone.
The charity has two rehoming centres in Scotland – one in Glasgow and another in West Calder which support dog owners from Aberdeen to the borders.
“We're in a situation now where we're seeing far more dogs come into our care than ever before,” the manager at the Glasgow rehoming centre, Sandra Downie, said.
“With the winter months approaching we are concerned that it is going to hit the charity worse, and we are going to see a massive need for our services much more than we’ve ever seen before.”
While families are putting their pets’ needs ahead of their own, the skyrocketing inflation and energy prices is already making it harder for owners to keep their pets.
Ms Downie added: “We’ve had someone hand a pet in before who was feeding his dog rather than himself and that wasn’t something he could keep on doing.
“These individuals are trying to put their dog’s needs before their own, but they get to a point where they realise that the most selfless thing they can do is let their dog come into come into Dog’s Trust care and have another start.
“That’s really hard,” she added.
But an increase in the number of people giving away their pet is not the only issue – pets being surrendered are coming with increased medical issues which are keeping them in the kennels longer.
Ms Downie said: “We're seeing more older dogs, which the owners have managed to care for any medical needs during their life, are now in a situation where they no longer can, so they are giving up on much-loved family pets.
“We're finding dogs that have been purchased during lockdown from various sources who have maybe not had the best starts of life or breeding.
These dogs have a bigger financial and training impact on the centre.
She added: “We are seeing massive changes to the work that we have to do in this rehoming centre and our foster because of the veterinary and training work needed.”
With the capacity to take in 100 dogs into their kennel at absolute peak times, the centre relies on foster carers which can help free up spaces within the centre for the pets at the highest priority.
“We are desperately needing more foster carers to support us,” the centre manager added.
“The number of dogs we are getting phone calls about and people turning up and asking for help is increasingly rising and we never want to turn someone away because of lack of space.”
With 65% of people in Scotland stating that the cost-of-living prices would stop them from adopting a pet, the charity’s chief executive Owen Sharp warned “it’s clear to see we’re about to have a serious animal welfare issue on our hands.”
The Glasgow rehoming centre has now also launched a pet food bank open seven days a week.
Ms Downie added: “If someone's struggling with their dog and feels rehoming is an option, encourage them to reach out to us. We can see if we can assist to stop that becoming a necessity.”
This is part of report on the impact of the cost of living on pet owners.
Read the full story: ‘It keeps me up at night’: Growing pet care crisis as cost-of-living drives families to brink
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here