A local community program in Toronto is offering high-demand pet services to help people in need support their pets, amid a growing affordability crisis.
Through Ruff Times, a program within the Breakaway Community Services, offers a food bank, volunteer care, and a grief support group for pet owners in the city.
The initiative was first founded by long-time volunteers and frontline workers Melissa Pisante and Mella Brown in 2018, after they both lost their own pets, and realized a need for the services. As awareness and demand for the services increased, the program was then adopted by Breakaway Community Services in 2022.
“As we were supporting these people over years, we often noticed that the relationships with the animals in life were the most important relationships, and often, sometimes, the only source of love and safety in their life,” Pisante told Now Toronto.
“Through Ruff Times came out of grief and love for our dogs and for our community. Because there is this privilege in having an animal and a relationship with an animal, and also privilege in being able to care for the animal without worrying about your own health.”
The program offers temporary pet care services, where volunteers open their homes to care for pets, when their owner has to attend to other commitments or their own needs.
“We were noticing that people wouldn’t go or couldn’t go to treatment because there was no one to take care of their dog or take care of their cats. So, we had folks who needed life-saving blood transfusions, for example, but there was no one to take care of our cats,” she said.
The project first started small, led by Pisante and Brown, who would do what they could to help after their regular work hours and during weekends, calling on local volunteers to temporarily open their homes for people’s pets.
Now, with support from the group, and more support from community donations, grants, and working relationships with local pet stores, Pisante says they are still limited, but were able to afford one more staff member and a salary that allows them to work on the project more hours per week.
Despite this growth, the pet care program is still primarily dependent on its nearly 60 volunteers, who drive and receive the pets into their homes. As explained by Pisante, the system is still limited, since the pets also need to be matched with an appropriate host to avoid issues.
“We have amazing people who are like, ‘Yes, I will take care of dogs.’ But at the same time, they also have maybe a kid at home or another dog at home, and then we’ll get a request for dog care and be like, ‘Well, they can’t be with kids,’ so then we lose that volunteer, right?”
The program also offers a pet-related grief and loss support named HOWL, providing counselling and community connection and a full “Growing With Grief” kit to help owners deal with the death of a beloved pet.
“There’s a lot of stigma around pet love and care, but also around the folks that we support, [about] the right to grieve the way one can grieve. So, grief of pet loss is often not acknowledged in the scene,” she said.
“Anyone who’s ever loved an animal knows it changes your life, right? When you have an animal, and then when you lose that animal, it’s taken away from you…it’s horrendous. So, there’s lots of grief.”
GROWING DEMAND FOR SERVICES
The program also offers a food bank service once a month dedicated to providing supplementary dog and cat food. The service is not meant to fully feed the animal, but rather support owners who can’t afford to completely provide for them.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Pisante says she has seen growing demand for the service, including requests from outside of the country that the program cannot afford to support.
“We got requests from all over, even the states, even outside of Ontario, but also like Vancouver and Winnipeg and then the United States. So, we have to now focus just on Toronto, or else we would drown,” she said.
“We’ve noticed since COVID, an increase in the need for support because folks who maybe have a job but have got laid off…and the cost of living has really increased. So, folks across the board are suffering…We’re noticing with pet food, there’s people who are like, ‘I just can’t afford anymore, because all the cost of living is going up.’”
According to the program co-founder, many service users have also been reporting that they can no longer afford to care for their pet since they have been evicted or had to move into housing that doesn’t accept pets.
“[Things] like, ‘I’m losing my housing in a month, and I have to live in my car,’ or ‘I need a shelter, and the shelter won’t take my dog’ or ‘I have to live with my mom and she’s allergic to cats.’ Like, there’s all these situations that could happen to any one of us and are at any time,” Pisante said.
Earlier this year, a report by the City of Toronto revealed the unhoused population in the city has more than doubled since the pandemic, going from 7,347 in 2021 to 15,418 in 2024.
The cost of living in the city has also significantly increased in recent years, given that rent for a bachelor unit is now 62 per cent higher than 10 years ago.
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With the growing need, Pisante says it is often difficult to keep up with demand, especially given the program’s reliance on donations and volunteers.
The co-founder says she has many dreams for the program, including a bigger space so it can host pets themselves to reduce the need for volunteers, and a van they can use to transport the animals.
“We don’t ever want to not be able to support, but our food bank is also run on donations, right? So, we can only work with what we have. And I think that’s like, the really hard, sometimes exhausting part of this work,” she said.
“I think the more we can focus on the same message and same desire or wish to help support people, the better. So, that would be my hope, to really collaborate, to bring this [up] with more resources and more capacity.”
Those who wish to apply for the services, volunteer, or submit donations, can find more information here.
