animal caretaker

counselor

processor

camp counselor

attendant

Humane Society

Working at EHS had its pros and cons. I’ll start with the pros as the cons list is much longer.

The only thing that kept me at EHS was the animals. I care deeply about animal welfare and spending time with them /caring for them really made me happy. My Co-workers were also very amazing people who became my close friends. Without them I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did. Working together we understand how difficult the job is and it was nice to have them to talk too and actually listen unlike management. 

A typical day at EHS is really stressful. You come to work with a smile and you leave exhausted, upset and burnt out. Working in animal care was hard work physically and having people treat you terribly when you’re doing your best was hard mentally. Animal care staff are worked so hard, and extremely underpaid. Without animal care the building would fall apart. We feed, clean and care for every animal in the building, while the higher ups wouldn’t be able to name a single animal. But yet they make double our salary. 

Supervisors of animal care audit everything animal care does like cleaning wards, feeding, etc. If you miss something extremely small like forgetting to restock the litter, you fail your audit. And usually if you get a bad audit you are also followed up, and if you try to stand up for yourself, you will be written up. If you have a concern or problem with a supervisor,  like for example bad attitude from a supervisor, you are told by management to deal with it yourself by confronting your supervisor. And if you confront your supervisor you will be written up. So if you are being treated poorly by a supervisor, you have no other choice but to be quiet and learn to deal with them. 

There was numerous times where I would be so busy and stop to simply breathe or grab a drink of water. And the supervisors would be coming around the corner to tell you off for not doing anything. You are expected to keep busy and not stop for a second and to not talk to your co workers at all during shift. If you try to do a task together you will be written up as they don’t like you working in teams. 

If an animal suddenly goes missing and you’re wondering if they got adopted or euthanized, you are expected to just forget about it. If they see you looked up where the animal went you are instantly written up. We were told it’s none of our business or concern where the animals go. This was extremely hard, as we get attached to every animal that comes through the door. We are with them more than anyone else in the building. We care for them all day every day and then we are told it’s “none of our business” where they went. The euthanasia rate is high. They also adopt to anyone that wants a pet, which makes the return rate extremely high, which usually results in the animals behaviour changing over time and leading to euthanasia. If you’re an animal lover, EHS probably isn’t the best place for you to work. 

You work 4 days and off one and then you work another 4 and you’re off 2. You get one weekend off each month. And you rotate between AM and PM shifts each week. There is no work life balance at all.

Because EHS is so awful. Animal care turnover rate is extremely high. But I don’t blame any of them for leaving because we did not make enough money to be treated so horribly and worked so hard. But because of the high turnover rate, we were always short staffed. Meaning OT was asked of you almost every day. We would be expected to do the work of 3 people each day for the same pay. Which resulted in us being burnt out and taking sick days and then the cycle would continue. OT was necessary because the pay is so low, but you’d have to work a lot of OT for it to even make a difference on your paycheck. 

I could write a book on my time at EHS but I’ll leave it at that. I wouldn’t recommend working here. You don’t make enough to cover the cost of living, you’re treated like you are disposable, and management is terrible. 

RUN!!




Working at the humane society was depressing and exhausting. They pay the lowest they can get away with because they’re “non profit” but have hundreds of thousands of dollars leftover at the end of the year and the most the staff gets is a rare pizza patty. The people in the building caring for the animals make barely above minimum wage but the board members who don’t even know a single animals name and rarely even enter the building make $100k a year. There is no such thing as asking for a raise. There is no room for advancement in the company even though they preach that there is. It’s almost impossible to have a second job as they work in 3 week rotations of morning and night shifts mixed which is unrealistic when they pay their staff so little. Medical concerns with animals get ignored so they get adopted faster, leaving owners to deal with sick animals that they were told were healthy.  Contagious disease control is almost nonexistent. An overwhelming amount of adoptable animals (specifically dogs) get put down because they spend too long in shelter and develop behaviour problems or they have a treatable medical condition that would’ve made them less likely to be adopted quickly. If the animal isn’t at least 75% perfect, it’s getting put down. They have an open adoption policy and aren’t allowed to deny anyone adoption even if they’re confident the animal is not going to a good home. Staff concerns are never taken seriously and staff get penalized for voicing concerns on legitimate issues. An overwhelming amount of physical donations get thrown straight into the dumpster without even being sorted through. Animal care staff has to beg for proper medical attention for the animals and for disease control to be taken seriously but all they get is a staff meeting telling them not to bother the medical team with multiple care requests. I saw all the bad reviews before I started working here and hoped they were just from angry employees but every bad review I read ended up being accurate. Do not work here if you care for animals and don’t want to see them suffer. 

I started this job thinking I knew what to expect based on reviews, but I did not.

One of the biggest issues was the rotating shifts. The schedule was really inconsistent, with random days off and frequent switches between day and evening shifts. It made it really tough to have any kind of work-life balance, and a lot of staff seemed to struggle with burnout. This led to a high turnover rate, which was concerning.

Another thing that bothered me was the adoption process. Staff can’t reject applications, which sometimes results in dogs being sent to homes that aren’t a great fit. I saw dogs getting returned multiple times before finding the right home. It felt like the adoption process wasn’t being reevaluated to improve the match between dogs and families.

I also noticed a lot of waste. While the organization gets donations from big companies and the public, it seemed like many items were just thrown away instead of being repurposed. That felt wasteful.

The company claims to explore all options before euthanizing animals, but from what I saw, if an animal needed a non-routine surgery, they wouldn’t pursue it and would instead euthanize the animal.

The organization says it’s all about educating the public, but in reality, they’re more concerned with protecting their image. For example, they avoid sharing things like how long animals have been in the shelter, as it could make them look bad. 

When it comes to career growth, I didn’t see many opportunities. There are a lot of rules that make it tough to get promoted, and it felt like they preferred hiring from outside the organization rather than promoting from within. When I asked for feedback after an interview, I didn’t get any answers. Overall, management and HR didn’t provide much support, and raising concerns just led to being dismissed or written up.

Based on my experience, I wouldn’t recommend working here if you’re truly passionate about animal care.

This is an absolutely horrible place to work. Every day animal care staff is overworked because the schedule is made up horribly so staff often end up staying late but they refuse to pay out any sort of overtime. Leadership at the shelter is rude and ignorant. If you try to bring up any suggestions to make changes to try and improve things they are shut down almost immediately. They make staff feel belittled and uncomfortable a lot of the time. They are absolutely no help when it actually gets busy in the shelter they just hide in the office or in the back to make it seem like they are talking about something important. Whenever a complaint is made against anybody HR does absolutely nothing about it and more often than not the person that you had an issue with is told that you made a complaint only creating more issues. All leadership and upper management make it seem like they are this exclusive club and that all other staff are beneath them and they don't need to care about our needs. Staff repeatedly miss breaks on a daily basis because the shelter is so constantly understaffed that they can't have more than one person on a break at a time and unfortunately leadership makes being up doing adoptions so horrid that the staff feel the need to hide in the back away from it all. When extra staff are needed to do less desirable jobs management lets people get away with saying no to doing things constantly. Absolutely no training was provided upon my hire and so I was definitely ill-equipped to be doing my job. Above all else, animal welfare seems to be the farthest thing from any of leaderships minds. They are rude, quick to judge and care more about the money than anything else. All I have left to say is don't even bother applying even if you love animals because guess what you do not get to spend hardly any time with them and the "perks" that come with being a staff member is not nearly good enough to make up for all of the awful things that the base staff put up with.

Never have I ever experienced such a toxic workplace and terrible management and in my honest opinion, EHS is in desperate need of nothing short of a complete structural and cultural overhaul. 

Leadership is a mess. I think a huge part of the issue is the senior leadership is so overworked that they barely know which way is up and are therefore ineffective at managing their teams. Many of them were covering multiple divisions and working insane hours trying to cope with it all, so a lot was just chaotic. 

My direct supervisor was difficult to work with and I significantly struggled trying to build a professional working relationship with them. They didn’t seem to know how to lead or effectively assign tasks within our team, and was an absolute micromanager. Communication was so all over the place I hardly knew what they expected of me most of the time. Minor mistakes were blown massively out of proportion, and within a very short period of time, I found myself walking on eggshells around them. On the whole I didn’t ever feel properly trained or supported in my role, and had no idea how to be successful there. 

I quit before the end of my probation because working there very quickly started taking a significant toll on my mental health, and it just wasn’t worth it to me. 

This all said I still have a tonne of respect for the work that they do. Being in animal care in any capacity is difficult at best. The animal care attendants and medical teams worked hard trying to care for all the animals in their care. They also have some fantastic programs like PALS and the pet pantry that are helping pets stay with their owners and helped with housing the pets of evacuees during the wildfires while I was there. 

It’s just sad to me how awful working there was and truly hope that they can turn it around. 

Most days at work involve being short staffed, and being tired from physically and mentally demanding work. However I have learned a lot working here, about animal behaviors, how to handle different animals and their behaviors, or how to take care of different kinds of animals. 
The supervisors are doing their best and trying to support animal care as best they can while also doing other parts of their jobs. Some of them have their moments, but they're all nice and good for the most part.
The workplace culture changes depending on the year, the employees, if we're short staffed, if people change positions, etc.
This job can be stressful, but their are also good moments when you get to be with the animals or enjoying your co workers company.
We do get audits by supervisors every month which is fine, but sometimes it can make you feel stressed about doing your work perfectly, or missing something.
I also don't agree with how loose/easy their adoption process is, because it can cause animals to get returned often because they weren't the right fit for certain people, but they were allowed to adopt still.
The hardest parts of the job is dealing with euthanasias, animals being returned, follow ups from supervisors, and being physically and mentally tired after a shift.
The best part of the job is working with my co workers and getting to take care of the animals.
Overall I enjoy working here, and I'd recommend it, as long as you're okay with being physically and/or mentally tired, short staffed, or dealing with the same things/issues often. 

I've worked at EHS for a few years, and upper management always seems to be an issue. Each time there's a turnover in upper management (CEO's, Directors, etc), you hope maybe this will be the change for the better. It never is.

Directors are severely under-qualified, and make changes without listening to staff who have been here for much longer and know better. They have been firing long-time staff for seemingly no reason over the last couple months, and also creating toxic environments to force other staff to leave. 

All the new managers and directors only care about money. They are cutting corners in terms of safety just to try to make a profit. We are a non-profit charity, this should not be our top priority. The animals should be #1 priority.

There aren't a lot of policies and procedures in place until something bad happens (volunteers/public getting hurt, cats left in a vehicle, etc). It's almost like working in a new start-up company, as nobody has any idea how to run a shelter. 

Not sure if the review published on May 9 2019 is fake but it is NOT better now. 

The only good thing about working here is the animals (obviously) and the amazing friends you make (it is easy to bond with coworkers when you're all struggling together). The Animal Care team members are amazing and work so hard to make this temporary home for the animals sanitary and welcoming while they're here. I love my team and the only reason I haven't left yet is because of them.

While bad before Covid, it is only worse now with a complete disconnect between management (what do they do in their homes all day) and front line staff.  One senior leader is currently working in THREE senior leader roles, and he isn't qualified for 2 of them.  He is dismissive, overworked and stressed out.  Not sure he ever goes home,  When a complaint is made to HR - don't hold your breath to EVER hear back from them (maybe they are busy trying to fill the other senior leadership roles that they can't keep people in) - or they will get back to you - to discipline you for speaking up.  Front line staff aren't properly trained and supervisors take no time to attempt to train.   Its not a very safe place for the animals either.  Random and subjective decisions are made about adoptions - with unfit families getting animals and seniors being refused animals because they are old.   After Covid there will be so many poor pets that will be abandoned because everyone thought it would be a good idea to adopt during Covid and our screening process sucks.  Don't expect a raise EVER and don't expect a promotion unless you are one of the few who stick it out the longest - promotions are based on nothing more than how long you have worked at the place.   Most enjoyable part of the job is of course the animals - worst part of the job is the management and culture - it was bad when I started, 2 years later its only worse.  

It’s hard work. You aren’t paid accordingly (an ever ongoing issue in the animal field) and you deal with dangerous animals and hazardous diseases on a regular basis. You work with some of the best people. How ever the is a lot for this role especially when dealing with the public. There are no prerequisites so they will hire anyone with a criminal record. The lack of care and knowledge about animals there is astounding. It seems that if you truly care about the animals and strive to ensure they are well taken care of you are the bad guy. Management doesn’t acknowledge the hard work and passion it’s employees have for its cause. It takes way to long for any progressive changes to be made (if any). And they never give you support when you are short staffed or dealing with difficult clients. EHS needs to up its standard for work as it seems to take all life out of anyone who stays there long. There is also NO room for career advancement despite many employees being well educated and qualified for new positions. Never mind the amount of euthanasia goes on behind closed doors. Do not get attached to any of the animals as they seem to not look for all the resources available before recommended euthanasia. The compassion grief and lack of support alone will make you lose your mind.

This job sounds like a dream come true for animal lovers.
The only positive experience working here was getting to care for less fortunate animals, and forming relationships with the animal care team. 
Animal care staff are over-worked and barely trained for the job, most of the “training” is rushed and forced, and there is negative impact if you ask for more time to learn. I saw many brand new staff emotional, and new faces appearing everyday. 
The disorganization and lack of training is extremely frustrating, there is little support for learning and new staff can be scolded for making small mistakes. 
The lack of communication between upper management and the front line staff is disturbing. It’s dehumanizing to be reprimanded for following company policy and requesting accommodations. 

Trying your best, and doing good work, will get you absolutely nowhere with this company, and the utter lack of compassion from operations management is abhorrent. You are just another number, and that is made absolutely apparent through the way you are treated by your superiors. 

If you struggle with mental or physical health, this is not an environment in which you will feel comfortable or thrive as an employee. 

Edmonton Humane Society. Do Better. 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Animal caretaker 2 salaries reported	$18.74 per hour
Counselor 3 salaries reported	$20.51 per hour
Processor 1 salary reported	$52,320 per year
Camp counselor 1 salary reported	$20.51 per hour
Attendant 1 salary reported	$20.51 per hour

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