Pets Suffering As Elderly Owners Move Into Care

A charity's warning about the high number of pets in Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire that are having to be rehomed because their elderly owners have gone into care.

A fifth of people say they know someone whose animal has become homeless when they've moved into a home, according to new research.

With some owners even being forced to have their cat or dog put down.

Amy Bryan is from the Hull Animal Welfare Trust and says it's a problem they see a lot at the charity. She told Viking FM:

"We get a lot of dogs that come into us because their owners are having to go into care. It's sad because the dogs have lived with them all their lives and sometimes the dogs are elderly themselves. We take all our animals back however old they are and for whatever reason and we see dogs coming back to us because their owners have gone into care.

"We see around 20 to 30 dogs a year that come into us because their owners are going into care which is quite a high number. Obviously we don't just deal with dogs, we deal with cats and other small animals and they also come to us for that side of the rescue too.

"As an older person, you have to look at what you need to happen to your animal if anything happens to you or if you need to go into care. I think you need to put something in place to make sure that your animal is looked after. It would be so much nicer if that animal could stay within the family so that it didn't have to lose its life.

"It's really difficult for an older pet to settle into a kennel environment, it's noisey and they're dealing with strangers. If the animal is elderly they often have health problems of their own. We had a little dog in a couple of months ago who had lost his sight and was losing his hearing and that was difficult for home being in an environment that he wasn't used to."