For animal rescues across Alberta, the situation is dire with winter fast approaching.

“Right now it’s quite possibly the worst we’ve ever seen,” explained Jani Painter, president of Arts Senior Animal Rescue .

“We’ve never been closed for intakes for this long. We’ve been closed since about August and that’s mainly due to funds.”

For ARTS, the economy is playing a big role.

“Donations are slower than we’ve ever seen. We’ll have a week where we will get not a cent.”

As a senior rescue, turning animals away is especially hard. They fear they’ll be euthanized.

“It’s had a real impact on our volunteers,” Painter said, tears welling up in her eyes. “The morale is pretty low when we know that we’re saying no every day, and it’s not one or two nos a day. It’s 15, 20 nos a day.”

Aman

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