The Estevan Humane society is starting an intake freeze, as they have a large number of animals already at their facility.

The freeze means that they won't be able to take any more, and will have to turn away any more animals that are delivered to them.

Both cats and dogs are over capacity, so the workers are hoping that adoptions spike up soon to free room.

President Tayja Lakusta says that it's not just the Estevan shelter that's seeing so many more animals.

"Every rescue is struggling right now. adoptions are slow, all across. I've seen multiple refuges starting to take on intake freezes as well, so it's not just us."

One cause of the increased shelter numbers is the number of pets being remanded to them following the quarantine.

"We're finding that we're getting surrendered animals back that were adopted during the COVID years that they were like 'we're at home, we have all of this time, let's adopt an animal.' Now that life is kind of getting back to opening up," said Lakusta, "People are realizing they don't have the time for animals and we're finding them back in our care."

They've also had a slowed down rate of adoption, noting that so far there have only been 3 cats adopted in June.

Normally, pets like kittens would be picked up as soon as they're available for adoption, but they currently have 21 for adoption.

The number of pets being kept in care is also affecting the Humane Society's ability to help out other animals.

"It's good that we're getting these animals off the streets and giving them a better life, but by them not being adopted as quickly as we'd like or what we would think they would be because there's nothing wrong with them, they're highly adoptable animals," said Lakusta, "It's preventing us from helping anymore."