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Partnership: Essential and Life-Saving
There are endless cliches, sayings and metaphors about the value of teamwork — and for good reason. It’s a fact that more can be done when people work together — I see it every day at the OHS. Supporting hundreds of animals daily is only possible because of a team of caring, compassionate people looking out for the animals.
Our staff is a part of this team and so are our volunteers, donors, adopters, supporters of all kinds, and our community partners.
Our community partnerships are something I value deeply as it’s only through these partnerships that Ottawa can create a secure safety net to protect all animals.
By ourselves, the OHS cannot help every animal in need. Animals such as wildlife and farm animals are beyond our scope of care. Some animals have longer-term or specialized needs that the OHS isn’t always in a position to provide, such as a dog requiring long-term foster care for behaviour issues or complex medical issues, or kittens requiring round-the-clock neonatal care. These animals are often better supported through our community partners who offer that specialized care. We value working with these partners, and supporting them, to help more animals to have a positive outcome.
Exploring even more ways we can work together to support our partners’ work and make more second chances possible is an important part of the OHS’s mandate. Our Partner Support program provides grants to organizations pursuing innovative programming that creates new pathways for animals in need. We regularly host spay/neuter clinics to sterilize animals in the care of our partners. We transfer animals to and from our partners to help with capacity issues and ensure animals have the best chance of success.
We also know that you trust in our work, and that your trust extends to those who the OHS partners with. For our domestic partners, we have criteria in place to ensure standards of care, such as only taking in a number of animals that the organization can reasonably care for. These standards help to further expand the safety net we are weaving for all of Ottawa’s animals.
I’m grateful for the many stellar partners the OHS has. By recognizing and celebrating the strengths of each organization, and working together, we can do so much more for the animals.
It takes a community to help all animals in need.
Sharon Miko
President & CEO
2021 Media Releases
Abandoned Dog Needs Life-saving Surgery (Dec. 16, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society Warns Against Cold Weather Dangers to Pets (Dec. 9, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society and Ottawa Food Bank Partner to Feed Ottawa’s Pets (Oct. 21, 2021)
Ottawa’s Animals Need Foster Volunteers (Oct. 7, 2021)
Ottawa’s Rabbit Crisis (Sept. 23, 2021)
Donations to Ottawa Humane Society Tripled Until Sept. 15 (Sept. 13, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society Cancels Annual Wiggle Waggle Walk and Run, Shifts To Online Fundraising (Aug. 17, 2021)
Rising Temperatures Pose a Danger to Pets (August 9, 2021)
Sunny the Puppy Needs Your Help (July 26, 2021)
Foster Volunteers Needed at Ottawa Humane Society (July 22, 2021)
Celebrations for Reopening and Canada Day Pose Serious Risk to Pets (June 30, 2021)
Wild Animal Responsible for West End Cat Killings — New Police Evidence Shows (June 24, 2021)
Puppy Thrown from Car Window Lands in OHS Care (June 24, 2021)
More Deceased Cats Ignite Further Concerns (June 18, 2021)
New Organization Emerges to Champion Animal Welfare across Ontario (June 17, 2021)
OHS Relaunches Online “Catch the Ace” Raffle (June 16, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society Offers Cash Reward to Bring West End Cat Killer to Justice (June 16, 2021)
Mother Cat Found Alone, Injured and Fending for Three Kittens (June 3, 2021)
Increased Danger to Pets Left in Cars as Temperatures Rise (May 19, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society Launches Catch the Ace Raffle to Support the Animals (May 12, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society Achieves Prestigious Accreditation by Humane Canada (Apr. 22, 2021)
Fatal Falls and Thin Ice, Ottawa Humane Society Warns of Spring Dangers for Pets (Mar. 30, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society Launches Lottery to Support the Animals (Mar. 17, 2021)
Cat Found Frozen and Near-death Rushed to Ottawa Humane Society (Feb. 23, 2021)
Keeping Pets Safe During Cold Weather (Feb. 12, 2021)
Ottawa Humane Society Helps Thousands of Animals Through Partner Support (Jan. 28, 2021)
Emaciated Dog with Chain Collar Embedded in Neck Finds Shelter at Ottawa Humane Society (Jan. 21, 2021)
Ottawa’s Underground Network for the Animals
It’s actually not underground at all, but with how few people know, it may as well be top secret and confidential.
Let me fill you in. Animal welfare organizations, like the OHS, work together. These partnerships don’t all look the same, but they all have the same goal: doing more for animals in need.
A great example is our Partner Support program — piloted during the pandemic when the future was uncertain and each day brought new challenges and hurdles. We provide grants to our partners who help animals we aren’t equipped to care for. Farm animals, wildlife, wild birds and more — the program has supported more than 10,000 animals to date. These grants don’t just help provide day-to-day care, but support new and novel programs that result in more animals receiving more care.
Through our Partner Support program, we also regularly host sterilization clinics that have provided close to 300 essential spay/neuter surgeries for cats, dogs and rabbits in the care of our partners.
Animal transfer is a huge part of these partnerships as well. Different animal welfare organizations have different strengths and are better equipped to provide for different animals. For instance, we recently took in 17 kittens from a rescue in need. We have the capacity to provide for these animals, a veterinary team to get them health checked, sterilized, vaccinated and ready for adoption, and a robust, connected adoption program to find them perfect forever homes — and fast.
We also transfer animals to our partners to help even more animals in need. Haven, a one-year-old grey tabby, came to us with a mass in her chest. We suspected that the mass was benign, but she would need to be monitored for a few months to know for sure. With such a long stay, we decided her best route was with a partner who specialized in foster-based rescue. By working together, Haven found a foster spot with our partner, concerns with her mass were ruled out, and she found her forever family shortly after!
I’m not exaggerating when I say it takes a village to care for animals in need and build a more humane and compassionate community. Working together with our partners and our caring community, we can be there for more animals in need.
Ottawa’s full of people who care, and it’s something everyone needs to know.
Heather Hunter
Director: Outreach and Community Services
Supporting Our Friends
I’ve long believed that more can be done for the animals when people and groups work together as friends.
While the OHS is by far the largest animal welfare organization in Ottawa, there are others: local rescue groups, and groups that specialize in care for farm animals, birds and wildlife.
When the public health crisis began, we knew it would impact our services and our partners’ services. Our partners commonly rely heavily on events to raise funds for the animals in their care, and COVID put a sudden halt to events as we knew them.
To help support our partners through the financial challenges of the public health crisis, we raided the piggy bank and created the OHS Partner Support Program. By the end of 2020, the program had helped support more than 2,800 animals in the community that might not have received the care they needed without a boost.
Seeing this success — and the tremendous need — we knew the program should be more than emergency support during this time of crisis. We extended the program to run on a regular cycle and devoted more funds to it. Now, twice a year, partners can apply for grants using a simple application and providing a short report on what the support has done for the animals in their care.
To date, the program has helped our friends care for an astounding 7,200 animals in our community, and another round of support is coming shortly.
The OHS has long been a friend and a refuge for Ottawa’s animals. We also want to be friends to our partners, and helping out one another is what friends do.
Bruce Roney
President & CEO
Contact Information and Hours
If you encounter an animal in immediate danger, dial 911. To get help for sick or injured animals, dial 311. To report animal cruelty or neglect, dial 1-833-9ANIMAL.
Membership, donations or tax receipts | 613-725-3166 ext. 299 donations@ottawahumane.ca Visit the Donate section of the website. |
Surrender a pet, information on wildlife, or end of life care (humane euthanasia services) | Learn more and begin the process by visiting the Giving Up Your Pet section of the website. 613-725-3166 ext. 223 intake@ottawahumane.ca |
Adoption | 613-725-3166 ext. 258 adoptions@ottawahumane.ca Visit the Adopt section of the website. |
Lost, found and injured animals (including wildlife) | 613-725-3166 ext. 223 intake@ottawahumane.ca Visit the Lost and Found section of the website. |
Volunteering | 613-725-3166 ext. 264 volunteer@ottawahumane.ca Visit the Volunteer section of the website. |
Child and youth programs, including birthday parties, camps, tours, youth programs and more | 613-725-3166 ext. 298 programs@ottawahumane.ca |
Adult programs, including dog training, pet first aid, webinars and more | 613-725-3166 ext. 204 education@ottawahumane.ca |
For microchips and City of Ottawa registration tags | For microchips, visit our How to Update your Pet’s Microchip page. For City of Ottawa registration tags, visit the City of Ottawa’s “Cat & Dog Registration” page. |
Community Services, including mobile spay-neuter for cats, emergency pet food bank, wellness clinics and more | Note that the OHS does not provide spay-neuter services for dog owners. Spay-neuter services for qualified cat owners are booked through our website. 613-725-3166 ext. 249 communityservices@ottawahumane.ca |
Pet Loss Support Groups and other therapeutic programs | 613-725-3166 ext. 235 outreach@ottawahumane.ca |
Media | Stephen Smith, Senior Manager: Marketing & Communications 613-725-3166 ext. 261 stephens@ottawahumane.ca Visit the Media Releases section of the website. |
Foster department | 613-725-3166 ext. 255 foster@ottawahumane.ca |
Estates and Legacy Gifts | 613-725-3166 ext. 268 legacy@ottawahumane.ca Visit the Legacy Giving section of the website. |
Nasty, Brutish and Short
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes described the life of humans without government as “Nasty, brutish, and short.” It is also an apt description of the lives of feral cats.
A feral cat is distinct from a stray cat, even if the cat has been stray for a long period of time, and from a “loosely-owned” or “porch” cat, a cat that is fed by one or more people in a neighbourhood who do not accept full responsibility for the cat’s care. Stray and loosely-owned cats are or were once socialized to humans. They may be wary and skittish around humans if they have not a had recent or extensive human contact, but they are not fearful to the extent that feral cats are.
Feral cats occupy a grey zone in the world of animal welfare. They are not wildlife per se. They are interlopers in our natural world and can cause considerable destruction in wild bird and mammal populations. They were introduced through human irresponsibility, and therefore are a human responsibility.
But they are not fully domestic pets either. They cannot just be rounded up and socialized. Kittens up to four months can be socialized, but adults will frequently injure themselves trying to escape when confined. Their panic in prolonged confinement is simply not humane.
Most progressive humane societies like the OHS practice “TNR” or “Trap, Neuter, Return” to address the needs of feral cats. Feral cats are removed from a colony, sterilized, vaccinated, and then returned to the colony. If newly introduced cats—new stray cats and the feral’s kittens—are consistently removed, the colony will disappear over time. Studies indicate that simply removing all the members of a colony does not work. Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum and other cats simply come to occupy the vacant colony, generally because of its proximity to shelter, food and water. The effectiveness of TNR was proven with the gradual elimination of the Parliament Hill Colony by some amazingly committed volunteers and the OHS a few years ago.
Like so many issues in animal welfare, controversies rage, and numbers of animals often exceed our resources to help. There are likely dozens of colonies in the Ottawa area, possibly many more. In fact, one of these controversies is how many feral cats there actually are in a given community. The OHS helps a handful of colony “caretakers” with surgical and other medical services, and we are very proud of our role in humanely eliminating the Parliament Hill colony, but our efforts are likely the proverbial drop in the bucket. Our best hope is education and promoting the kind of responsibility that would stop feral cats from coming into existence in the first place, through spaying and neutering cats and not letting them roam. And this takes time.
Bruce Roney
President & CEO
Originally published in September, 2014
A Tragic Death
Harambe |
The world has been shocked and horrified by the shooting of Harambe, a 17-year-old silverback gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. If you haven’t yet heard the story, a four-year-old boy fell into the gorilla enclosure, and after some tense moments, with the gorilla dragging the boy around the compound and displaying behaviour that some have described as protective, others as dangerously agitated, zoo officials made the decision to shoot Harambe. The child was rescued, relatively unscathed and the gorilla is now dead.
I feel for everyone involved: the child, the distressed mother, the zoo employees called upon to shoot a creature that they had raised from birth — one of the last of his kind. As for Harambe, his death just makes me very, very sad.
I have looked at the footage of the incident, and have thoughts, but given I am in no way an expert, or even slightly conversant in gorilla behaviour, I will not stoke the fire. I will keep my observations to myself.
But here is what I do know: when there is conflict between humans and wild animals, whether they be a gorilla in a zoo, a performing elephant, or a fox living on a piece of land to be developed, the animal almost always loses.
What can you do? You can reject circuses, zoos and aquariums that exploit animals for entertainment. Rather than trapping and relocating wildlife on your property, you can learn to coexist. If we make these changes, maybe one day the animals will stop losing.
Bruce Roney
Executive Director
Bilingualism and Beyond
One of the happiest days in my work life was in 2014 when the OHS was finally in a financial position to hire a Humane Education Coordinator to deliver our education services in French. It was the fulfilment of a promise I had made to a supporter years before, and I was delighted.
Since then, the OHS has made very significant strides in our ability to provide French services. Each year, we translate more and more of our materials as a part of our translation plan. And last year alone, we reached an amazing 4,606 children and young people in French with our programming — representing 25% of all those we reached last year.
I am contacted from time to time from supporters who believe that everything we do and everything we produce at the OHS should be done in English and French. We have always, of course, ensured that clients with immediate needs, such as those relinquishing or claiming a pet, or those contacting us with urgent questions, can be served in French. But while I am sympathetic to those wanting the OHS to be 100% bilingual, I know that the resources that would have to be redeployed to translation from care and programming would be ruinous, as the cost of this is enormous and the ultimate cost in animal lives unacceptable. So, we have found compromises and have adopted a less comprehensive, but I think reasonable, approach to growing our bilingual capability.
When the board came to develop our current strategic plan three years ago, it recognized that, given the diverse make-up of our community, communicating in English and French alone was not sufficient. Ottawa is no longer simply a French-English community. It is far more diverse than that. The plan recognizes that the OHS needs to better reflect the linguistic and cultural make-up of the community we serve. And so we consulted with groups in Ottawa who are serving Newcomers to Canada and from this are developing programs and partnerships to help them to navigate Canada’s pet culture and unique wildlife, ultimately to the benefit of animals and the Newcomers.
And I am as happy about this next phase of our evolution and the development of animal welfare in our community as I was in 2014 when the OHS finally broke our bilingualism barrier.
Bruce Roney
Executive Director
2019 Media Releases
- Protect Pets from Cold Temperatures This Winter (December 5, 2019)
- We woof you a Merry Critter Christmas! (November 29, 2019)
- Santa Paws is Coming to Town! (November 27, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society Welcomes new Ontario Animal Protection Legislation (October 29, 2019)
- OHS Halloween safety tips for your pets (October 28, 2019)
- It’s Howl-O-Ween at the Ottawa Humane Society! (October 24, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society to Host its First Adopt-a-thon, Over 180 Animals Looking for Homes (October 4, 2019)
- Emaciated Puppy Found in Wooded Area Comes Into Ottawa Humane Society Care (October 3, 2019)
- Seniors’ Day at the Ottawa Humane Society (September 26, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society Honours Community’s Contributions at its Annual General Meeting (September 23, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society Animal Stolen from Pet Valu on Ogilvie Road, $200 Reward for Tips Leading to a Safe Return (September 16, 2019)
- PetSmart Charities’ National Adoption Weekend to Feature Ottawa Humane Society Cats at Ottawa Locations (September 12, 2019)
- 31st Annual Ottawa Humane Society Wiggle Waggle Walk & Run Fundraising Event (September 5, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society to Feature Long-Stay Adopt-From-Foster Pets at Upcoming Adoption Event (August 20, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society to Participate in PetSmart Adoption Event in Response to a Recent Population Surge (August 15, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society Urging Pet Owners to Keep Pets Safe During Travel, After Two Dogs Fall Out of Moving Vehicles in One Day (August 9, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society Nearing Capacity and Still Filling, Seeking Community’s Help to Avoid Crisis (July 30, 2019)
- 38 Kittens Transferred to Ottawa Humane Society – Most Ready for Adoption (July 17, 2019)
- Increased Danger to Pets Left Alone in Cars as Heat Wave Blankets City: Ottawa Humane Society (July 3, 2019)
- Canada Day: The Perfect Pet Storm (June 28, 2019)
- See an Animal in Distress? The OHS wants to make sure you know who to call. (June 24,2019)
- The Ottawa Humane Society Encouraging Businesses to be Dog-Friendly (June 17, 2019)
- The Ottawa Humane Society is Now Finding Homes for Feral Cats (May 30, 2019)
- Get a Microchip For Your Pet: The Difference Between Lost and Found (May 2, 2019)
- Protect Pets from Spring Dangers (April 4, 2019)
- Update on Wandering and Starving Labrador-cross Dog (March 22, 2019)
- This February, Love is in the Air at the Ottawa Humane Society (February 7, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society to Hold Microchip Clinic Sunday, Feb. 10 (February 5, 2019)
- Stray Cat Rescued by Ottawa Fire Services Recovering in Ottawa Humane Society Care after Wandering onto the Rideau River (January 31, 2019)
- Protect Pets From Dangerously Cold Temperatures (January 22, 2019)
- No more “ruff” days at the office! (January 18, 2019)
- Ottawa Humane Society to Hold Microchip Clinic Sunday, Jan. 13 (January 7, 2019)
Emergencies
If an animal’s life is in immediate distress as a result of cruelty or neglect, contact the police at 911. To report animal cruelty or neglect, call 1-833-9ANIMAL.
If you find a sick or injured stray animal with no owner in sight, or a wild animal, call the City of Ottawa at 311.
Find out what to do for non-urgent wildlife issues.
Once an animal is rescued, it is brought to the Ottawa Humane Society or a veterinary clinic (outside of regular OHS hours) for an exam and to be stabilized. If the animal has extensive injuries and is in immediate distress, and where the owner cannot be located within a reasonable amount of time, the animal may be humanely euthanized to prevent further suffering. All decisions on treatment and euthanasia are made in consultation with a veterinarian.
The OHS makes every attempt to find the owner — but please do your part by ensuring that your animal companions are identified with a microchip, collar and tag. If the animal’s owner is located, the owner is required to reimburse the OHS for all expenses incurred in caring for their pet.
If you have been bitten or scratched by a stray animal, please seek immediate medical attention and contact the City of Ottawa at 311.