It has been almost six years since Regina-based dog rescue CC RezQs last announced that they could no longer take in dogs and puppies because of a lack of resources.
That changed this week when the non-profit organization had to make the difficult decision to initiate an intake freeze because they do not have enough foster families available.
The announcement was made public on the organization’s Facebook page where members of the dog rescue stated that they are currently unable to take in any dogs or puppies.
The rescue waitlist had grown to 31 additional dogs and puppies.
“We are currently in a position where we have unending requests for help and no homes open to put the dogs and puppies needing rescue,” stated CC RezQs in their social media post.
“On this list, we have adult dogs, young adults, litters that are both with and without moms, pregnant dogs, individual pups, dogs being surrendered and basically everything else you can imagine.”
Stephanie Senger, who serves as one of the directors of CC RezQs, said they work with approximately 26 First Nations and rural communities around Regina to rescue, rehabilitate, and re-home dogs.
The organization has rescued 188 dogs and puppies so far in 2022.
However, the present lack of foster families available has forced the group to address the backlog of dogs on their waitlist and assess how they can speed up the process of finding placements.
Senger said foster availability is not where it has been compared to previous years.
“We were feeling a little bit of a lull in adoptions, so the rate at which dogs and puppies are getting adopted is a little bit slower than usual and definitely slower than we’d like it to be. So dogs are taking longer to find homes, which means they’re sitting in foster homes longer, which then ties up those homes even longer,” Senger explained.
“It’s not even that we’re in a financial crisis at the moment.”
Another factor that pushed the organization to set an intake freeze is an increase in surrenders.
Senger mentioned that with more dogs being surrendered back to their care, it results in less foster placement spots at their disposal.
“That’s for any number of reasons. A lot of it is people returning to work post COVID-19 and just not managing the adoption of their dogs. So yeah, a few factors are making it really tough.”
For Senger, she said the solution for all rescues is to receive help and support from the community to continue doing what they do. In this case, it means finding more people interested in becoming a foster to puppies and dogs looking for their forever home.
“If we had 10 new foster families or 20 new foster families, that would mean that 10 to 20 new dogs and puppies can come into care,” she added. “The solution is just having more people interested in it, getting people who want to give it a try for the first time, getting people interested in fostering and seeing what it’s all about so that we can continue to do what we do.”
CC RezQs says they provide all the supplies needed to foster a dog or puppy, however, interested individuals or families must be within one hour of Regina.