Lethbridge’s animal shelter is seeing animal intakes return towards pre-pandemic levels after nearly four years at or above capacity, while shelters elsewhere in Alberta continue to face heavy demand. The Community Animal Services shelter is currently operating at 40 per cent capacity, director of enforcement Skylar Plourde said.

“We are definitely starting to see a return to sort of the pre-pandemic type numbers,” Plourde said. He said pandemic-era interest in pet adoption grew as more people stayed home and worked remotely during restrictions, but backyard breeding also increased.

“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 said. The shelter then received more stray animals that were not claimed, while reduced adoption interest meant some animals stayed in kennels for extended periods.

“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,” he said. The resulting pressure led the shelter to reach capacity, turn pets away or seek help from other animal rescue groups.

“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,” Plourde 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.”

Plourde described Lethbridge as an exception to conditions in much of the province and said he hopes the decline will spread. “We are sort of an enigma to a lot of things that happen in the rest of the province,” he 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.”

The Lethbridge shelter does not directly handle owner surrenders, a difference Plourde said may help explain why other rescue organizations remain busy. Alberta SPCA executive director Leanne Niblock said reports from shelters and communities indicate demand remains high, though intake varies between communities.

“We’re not seeing an overall drop in demand for shelter services across Alberta,” Niblock said. “While intake levels can vary from community to community, we continue to hear from shelters that they are operating at or beyond capacity.” The Alberta SPCA helps shelter animals across the province but does not operate a physical animal shelter; Niblock said its assessment is based on information from animal welfare organizations and communities.

“The number of calls we receive regarding animals in distress remains high,” Niblock said. Meanwhile, Plourde said Lethbridge is receiving more reports of animals abandoned amid housing problems, although he could not say whether those cases are newly emerging or simply easier to identify.

“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.” He added: “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.”

The City of Lethbridge updated its animal care and control bylaw in 2025 to support animal control across the city. The rules limit households to six adult cats, make pet licensing voluntary and introduce stricter penalties.

Plourde said the bylaw appears to have led to 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,” he said. “Hopefully that means there is a growing amount of responsible pet ownership which is ultimately what we really want.”

Based on reporting by CTV News Calgary.