New Brunswick Rescue Dog Resource
Who handles strays, who investigates cruelty, where to find shelters and rescues, and where to turn when you need help keeping the dog you already have.
Last verified: October 7, 2026
New Brunswick doesn’t have one organization doing every job involving dogs.
The New Brunswick SPCA — NBSPCA handles animal-protection enforcement across the province. It also provides animal control in rural districts and a number of municipalities. Shelters, however, are independently operated rather than branches of one provincial shelter system.
So start with the problem you actually need solved.
Start Here
| What’s happening? | Where to start |
|---|---|
| Suspected cruelty, neglect or an animal in distress | NBSPCA 24/7 hotline: 1-877-722-1522 |
| A person is in immediate danger | 911 |
| Dog bite or attack without an immediate threat to life | Local animal control; call 911 for serious injury or immediate danger |
| Loose, nuisance or aggressive dog | Local animal control, or the NBSPCA where it provides that service |
| Your dog is missing | Local animal control and the nearest shelter immediately |
| You found a loose dog | Local animal control first |
| You need to surrender your dog | Contact the appropriate shelter or rescue before travelling |
| Serious veterinary emergency | Call your veterinarian or an open emergency veterinary hospital |
If you aren’t sure whether an animal-control issue belongs with the NBSPCA or your municipality, call the NBSPCA at 1-877-722-1522. Its guidance says the operator can tell you which system applies.
Reporting Animal Cruelty or Neglect
For suspected cruelty or neglect anywhere in New Brunswick, call the New Brunswick SPCA confidential 24/7 hotline at 1-877-722-1522.
NBSPCA Animal Protection Officers investigate cruelty and neglect across the province. When you report a concern, give them whatever useful information you actually have: what you observed, the animal involved, where and when it happened and who was involved.
You don’t need to decide whether what you saw meets a legal definition of cruelty before making the call.
Animal cruelty or neglect:
The NBSPCA reporting line operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If a person is in immediate danger, call 911.
Animal Control: Your Location Matters
This is where New Brunswick becomes less straightforward.
The NBSPCA provides animal control throughout rural districts and in a substantial number of municipalities. Its current service list includes communities such as Oromocto, Quispamsis, Hampton, Sussex, Salisbury, New Maryland and Woodstock, along with the province’s rural districts.
Service arrangements can change, so use the NBSPCA’s live Areas Served list rather than assuming an older list still applies.
NBSPCA — Animal Control and Areas Served →
Fredericton
Fredericton directs domestic-animal complaints to Animal Control at 506-363-3320. The city directs immediate public-safety hazards and emergencies to 911.
City of Fredericton — Law Enforcement and Animal Control →
Saint John
Saint John’s Dog Control By-law is enforced through Saint John SPCA Animal Rescue. For Saint John animal-control issues, call 506-633-1228. The city directs complaints, concerns and dog-bite reports there and notes that police may also be contacted when a dog bite occurs.
City of Saint John — Animal Control →
Greater Moncton and surrounding service areas
People for Animal Wellbeing — PAW provides animal-control enforcement for Moncton, Dieppe, Riverview, Tantramar, Dorchester and specified surrounding service areas.
PAW Animal Control:
PAW lists stray animals, barking complaints, dogs running off leash and dangerous or aggressive animals among the issues handled by its animal-control service.
If you don’t know which system owns the problem, call the NBSPCA at 1-877-722-1522 and ask.
That’s considerably more useful than spending an hour being transferred around while the dog you’re calling about keeps moving.
Shelters in New Brunswick
New Brunswick’s animal shelters aren’t branches of the provincial NBSPCA.
The NBSPCA says the shelters it works with are independently operated, funded and governed by their own boards while following provincial standards for animal shelters.
Its current provincial directory includes:
| Area | Shelter |
|---|---|
| Acadian Peninsula | SPCA Péninsule Acadienne |
| Victoria County | Victoria County SPCA |
| Miramichi | Miramichi SPCA |
| Charlotte County | Charlotte County SPCA |
| Fredericton | Fredericton SPCA |
| Saint John | Saint John SPCA |
| Greater Moncton | People for Animal Wellbeing — PAW |
| Upper Saint John River Valley | Valley SPCA La Vallée |
| Oromocto area | Oromocto & Area SPCA |
| Bathurst | Bathurst SPCA |
| Restigouche County | Restigouche County SPCA |
| Carleton County | Carleton County Animal Shelter |
| Edmundston / Madawaska | Refuge Madawaska Shelter |
The NBSPCA identifies Carleton County Animal Shelter and Refuge Madawaska Shelter as not affiliated with the SPCA.
Use the NBSPCA Find Your Local Shelter directory as the current source of truth. Hours, contact information, intake arrangements and organizational status can change.
NBSPCA — Find Your Local Shelter →
And don’t assume the closest shelter on a map is automatically responsible for a stray dog from your community. Animal-control contracts and intake jurisdictions don’t always follow simple distance.
Foster-Based Dog Rescue
Shelters aren’t the only route.
New Brunswick also has foster-based rescue organizations that don’t operate a public kennel facility.
Fulfilling Hearts Rescue is one example. It is a volunteer-run, all-breed dog rescue that operates through approved volunteer foster homes across New Brunswick, primarily in the Greater Moncton area, rather than maintaining a traditional shelter building.
That distinction matters.
A foster-based rescue may be able to help a dog that fits its program, but intake depends heavily on an appropriate foster home being available. Fulfilling Hearts says that without a suitable foster home, accepting a surrendered dog may take hours, days or weeks — and sometimes it simply can’t take the dog.
Fulfilling Hearts Rescue — FAQs →
If You Need to Surrender Your Dog
Call or apply before you drive anywhere.
A shelter having dogs available for adoption doesn’t mean it has an empty kennel waiting for an owner surrender.
PAW says directly that it cannot accept every owner surrender. Owners submit a surrender request, the circumstances are evaluated and intake depends on what the shelter can accommodate. PAW also states that it is unable to accept animals with an extensive bite history.
As verified in October 2026, PAW lists dog and cat surrender fees ranging from $50 to $150 CAD.
Fulfilling Hearts Rescue lists a surrender fee of $40 CAD for a spayed or neutered dog and $80 CAD for an intact dog when the rescue approves the surrender.
Fees and intake policies can change. Confirm the current terms with the organization before making plans.
Fulfilling Hearts Rescue — Dog Surrender Process →
When you contact an organization, tell them what’s actually going on.
Behaviour problems matter. So does a bite history. Medical conditions matter. Medication matters. Other dogs and cats matter. Housing deadlines matter.
Leaving out the hard parts doesn’t make the dog easier to place.
It moves the problem downstream, usually onto somebody who had less information than you did.
Before Surrender Becomes the Only Option
Sometimes the crisis is real, but surrender isn’t the only possible answer.
PAW currently operates programs intended to help keep animals with their families, including Roxy’s Pet Pantry, Healthy Moms, Healthy Litters, spay/neuter assistance and Pet Safe Keeping, which works with agencies supporting people experiencing intimate-partner violence.
Those programs won’t solve every situation, and availability isn’t province-wide.
But if food cost, veterinary expense or a temporary human crisis is pushing a dog toward surrender, ask what help exists before assuming the relationship has reached the end of the road.
If Your Dog Is Lost
Move quickly. Where the NBSPCA provides animal control, Animal Protection Officers post notices of all dogs they pick up on the official NBSPCA Facebook page. The NBSPCA tells owners of missing dogs to check that page and contact their local shelter. If your municipality has its own animal-control system, contact that service as well.
NBSPCA — Animal Control and Lost Dog Guidance →
In the Greater Moncton service area, PAW also maintains a current Lost Animals directory.
There’s a legal reason not to wait.
Where New Brunswick’s Dog Control Regulation, Regulation 2022-36 under the Local Governance Act applies, a dog-control officer who seizes and impounds a dog found at large must notify the owner when the owner is known.
If the owner is unknown or can’t be located, public notice must be given.
The regulation then provides 72 hours from the time notice is given for the owner, or someone acting for the owner, to reclaim the dog and pay the applicable costs.
After that period, the regulation permits the dog to be sold, placed for adoption or destroyed.
Government of New Brunswick — Dog Control Regulation 2022-36 →
That clock runs from notice, not automatically from the moment the dog was picked up.
The regulation itself applies in local service districts and in rural communities and regional municipalities that have not made their own animal-control bylaw for that service. Other municipalities can operate under their own bylaws, with different impound and reclaim procedures.
So don’t spend three days hoping somebody eventually posts your dog in a random community Facebook group. Check the official NBSPCA channel when the NBSPCA serves your area, and use your municipality’s official animal-control route where it doesn’t.
Contact animal control. Contact nearby shelters. Search the area. Check current stray listings. Call veterinary clinics. Confirm that the microchip registry has your current telephone number.
If You Find a Loose Dog
Safety comes first. A frightened dog that looks approachable from across a road may behave very differently when someone reaches for its collar or tries to force it into a vehicle.
If you can safely contain the dog, look for identification and contact the animal-control service responsible for the area.
Where the NBSPCA provides animal control, call 1-877-722-1522. Its officers handle stray dogs running at large, nuisance dogs and attacks involving dogs.
Inside municipalities with their own animal-control system, use that local route instead.
A shelter or veterinary clinic may be able to scan a safely contained dog for a microchip. Call before arriving with an unfamiliar animal.
What About Stray Cats?
Don’t automatically use the dog-control route.
The NBSPCA says it generally doesn’t pick up stray or homeless cats unless the cat is injured, in immediate danger or being abused.
When an owner can’t be found, it recommends contacting the nearest shelter. The NBSPCA also says it doesn’t handle feral-cat colonies and points people toward CARMA Maritime where appropriate.
Municipal rules can differ.
Check the system where the cat was actually found.
Dog Registration and Local Rules
New Brunswick doesn’t have one registration procedure that can safely be copied across every municipality.
Under the provincial Dog Control Regulation, where that regulation applies, someone who becomes the owner of a dog must register the dog within 30 days. Registration can run for one, two or three years, and the issued registration tag must be kept attached to the dog’s collar.
Government of New Brunswick — Dog Control Regulation →
Municipal systems can be different.
Saint John has its own dog-licensing requirements under its municipal Dog Control By-law.
City of Saint John — Animal Control →
Moncton provides an especially useful example of why checking locally matters: dogs in the city require a licence unless they’re microchipped. A microchipped dog is exempt from the licence requirement but still has to comply with the rest of the municipal animal-control bylaw.
City of Moncton — Dog Licence →
So before relying on a province-wide summary, check your municipality.
Five minutes on the right municipal page beats finding out the rule when somebody hands you a ticket.
Veterinary Emergencies in New Brunswick
Know where you would go before you need to go there.
The New Brunswick Veterinary Medical Association has warned that after-hours and emergency veterinary coverage can be difficult in rural and underserved areas. Geography and staffing can mean emergency and critical-care services are concentrated in larger centres.
New Brunswick Veterinary Medical Association — Position Statements →
Two verified hospitals currently advertising 24/7 emergency service are:
| Emergency hospital | Location | Telephone |
|---|---|---|
| Capital City Emergency Veterinary Hospital | 80 Bishop Drive, Fredericton | 506-447-8387 |
| Port City Emergency Veterinary Hospital | 212 McAllister Drive, Saint John | 506-658-8387 |
Capital City Emergency Veterinary Hospital →
Port City Emergency Veterinary Hospital →
For a seriously injured or suddenly ill dog, call ahead when circumstances allow.
The nearest veterinary clinic geographically may not be the nearest clinic able to handle the emergency at that hour.
Dog Bites and Immediate Danger
A dog bite can involve more than one system.
Animal control may investigate the dog under the applicable provincial regulation or municipal bylaw. Saint John, for example, specifically directs dog-bite reports to Saint John SPCA Animal Rescue and notes that police can also be contacted.
City of Saint John — Animal Control →
Where the provincial Dog Control Regulation applies, a dog-control officer may seize and impound a dog alleged to have bitten or attempted to bite a person while proceedings are dealt with.
If someone is seriously injured or a dangerous situation is still happening, call 911.
Don’t turn an emergency into a bylaw question.
Getting to the Right Door
New Brunswick’s system makes more sense once you stop looking for one organization that handles everything.
Cruelty reporting is province-wide through the NBSPCA, but animal control, shelter intake, lost-dog routing and emergency veterinary access all depend on location and capacity.
The useful question is:
Where to Go Next
Once New Brunswick has answered the jurisdiction and resource questions, move to the next decision.
Editorial note: This resource is informational and was verified against current government, municipal, shelter, rescue and veterinary sources in October 2026. Animal-control contracts, shelter capacity, fees, bylaws and organizational policies can change. Confirm current instructions with the responsible authority or organization when the situation is urgent.
Because Love Doesn’t Quit.