Dogs Trust has a waiting list of more than 1,000 dogs queuing to be given up by their families having already received 50,000 requests from individual owners desperate to surrender their pets this year alone.
Each of the 1,000 is waiting for a kennel space with the charity, which has a base in Ballymena, with the hope of their pet being surrendered and ultimately rehomed.
And these 1,000 dogs will be at the head of the Dogs Trust queue of unwanted pets in 2023, with no respite from 2022 which proved to be the busiest year in the charity's 131-year history for pet hand-overs both in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
