By Rachel Pinder of NZPA
SPCA staff in Christchurch have been pushed to breaking point after being inundated with lost pets and abandoned animals in the weeks following February's earthquake.
About 500 animals have been cared for at the centre over the past six weeks - about double the usual number.
Many of these pets had become lost during the quake and aftershocks, or were being looked after while their owners searched for new homes.
Staff had been very stretched but were coping, SPCA Canterbury manager Geoff Sutton told NZPA.
"They have been totally committed and over-worked since the day of the quake, and we're desperately trying to give people some time off now to catch up with their own sanity, and I'm one of them," Mr Sutton said.
"We had some staff who hit the wall a bit in week four, and others hit the wall a bit in week five. We had to make sure that those staff were given some time off."
Staff had been running on adrenalin for a while, but at some point that caught up with them.
"We probably didn't anticipate it properly, and things are still very busy," Mr Sutton said.
While it was hard for everybody in Christchurch, it was hard for those businesses which were up and running to have some normality "because so much of what we rely on is not available".
"It does test everybody, but I couldn't have been more proud with the way our staff here have risen to the occasion," he said.
The Canterbury SPCA branch in Hornby had 20 staff, although Mr Sutton said there were more field staff brought in during the first couple of weeks to cope with the extra demand.
Emergency vet response staff from Massey University and SPCA Wellington's animal rescue unit were also sent down, which was a huge help, Mr Sutton said.
"Some of our staff have been affected by the quake themselves, so their commitment and dedication is even more overwhelming."
The SPCA Canterbury branch was still at capacity, with 170 animals staying in the shelter today.
"Our isolation unit is now becoming a bottleneck. We can't hurry that because we can't put animals at risk. When we bring in new ones we don't want to be bringing in an outbreak of something which puts all the animals at risk.
"So we have to maintain the levels of infection control to high standards, to make sure that what we're doing isn't making things worse."
No animals had been put down, and some animals were being moved off-site to other branches for permanent adoption.
Some animals, whose owners had been evacuated, were moved to the SPCA in Timaru, while others had been relocated to SPCA's in Otago, Southland and the West Coast.
Last month, the Canterbury SPCA teamed up with a number of Christchurch veterinary clinics to offer 10,000 pet owners a Chip your Pet for Free campaign, which started on March 21 and runs until April 25 or until stocks run out.
The campaign has been picked up very well but it won't last until April 25 because we're running out of stock, Mr Sutton added.
"There's a lot of lessons to be learnt from this quake. Petwise, if people don't have a means of containing or taking their pet with them when they evacuate, they need to have all their pets microchipped. Those are the lessons we must learn from this.
"Organisations like ours can't continue to be everything to everybody without some assistance from pet owners," Mr Sutton said.
NZPA