(Submitted Photo/Battlefords' Humane Society)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Cats and Dogs

Foundation for new humane shelter laid; president looks to future

May 27, 2024 | 3:34 PM

With the foundation laid, the new shelter is in the early stages of seeing what lies ahead for community animals.

“It’s not quite as simple as building a regular building for general duty purposes,” said David Gubbe, president of the Battlefords’ Humane Society.

“There’s specialized air-handling systems and there’s a variety of rooms and spaces that are used for different functions and so it’s more involved.”

Gubbe said the housing and other equipment needs to be installed for cleaning and sanitizing. The journey to get this far has been more than a 10-year process but he and the team expect to open the new 4,800 square foot space sometime next year.

“We will have extra capacity, but it won’t be double or triple,” he said. “The intent was never to – we can’t warehouse animals – that’s just not a sustainable concept for any animal shelter.”

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Gubbe explained the purpose is to create a healthy space to keep animals until they are rehabilitated before adoption.

“The primary intent was to get out of an old, decrepit, inadequate facility which is simply not designed or equipped for proper animal handling and care,” he said of the current location which has served the community for over 50 years.

As part of the new design, animals will have better separation between intake and quarantine. There will also be areas for cleaning and grooming.

“As you can imagine some of the stray animals that come in are filthy, they’re covered in ticks, they’ve got various health issues that need to be dealt with,” said Gubbe.

“The animals that leave our facility are fully vaccinated, micro-chipped spayed or neutered and for all intents and purposes are in good health.”

Currently, the numbers of animals residing in the shelter are in a constant state of fluctuation, but they have 18 kennels in the main holding area, although some are doubled – and there are additional kennels in the intake area.

“The new facility will have maybe approximately 30 in the main dog adoption area and it’ll have better facilities for cats as well.”

The president said although they may have the facility, they would like to see less animals come in, not more. However, he acknowledged that isn’t the current trend.

“In the real world right now, it seems to be the opposite is happening,” he said.

“Shelters everywhere seem to be getting higher volumes of unwanted and stray animals and it’s becoming a serious…issue.”

Gubbe said there isn’t an easy answer to the solution of excess numbers of animals and it had been getting better. Then the pandemic hit and it changed things.

“A lot of people increased the number of animals they had and then now aren’t coping with them, so there’s problems arising – I don’t know if that’s the reality or not but whatever the reason is it has changed a little bit in the last couple of years,” said Gubbe.

Meanwhile, the fundraising for the project continues.

“The next few months will determine how fast the whole process of this build and getting things fully equipped and furnished pay out,” he said.

“Whether we’ll be able to get in sooner or whether it’ll be later will depend on how successful we are on raising some additional funds.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

OnX: jls194864