Families give up pets as ‘strays’ to go on holidays – WSPCA
SOME dog and cat owners who are heading off on holiday are handing their pets to the WSPCA claiming they are strays.
In other cases, people who want to keep their children entertained for the school holidays are asking the charity for dogs and cats which they have no intention of keeping once the youngsters go back to school.
Brigid Cullen, from the WSPCA, said things had never been so bad.
‘Every year we say things will get better, but they never do.. they aren’t. The whole kennels is full of cats and kittens and the dog pound in Gorey and the county council pound are completely full,’ she said.
Brigid said the WSPCA was having to place dogs in private kennels, each of the animals costing the charity €10 a day and this after the dog warden took in 30 dogs from her.
‘You know in your heart that some of the dogs being brought in are not strays but are family pets. We get some people claiming they are strays and saying that if the dog is still there when they reurn from their holidays they will take it in, but you know it belongs to them in the first place,’ she said.
‘I’m not saying there are not genuine people out there, but there is a lot of this going on.’
‘At the moment we are just packed. We can’t take in any more in,’ she said.
In 2015, the council dog warden Johnny Colfer collected 1061 dogs; 135 were reclaimed, 689 were rehomed/transferred, 232 were put to sleep and 51 owners were fined.
So far this year, 260 dogs have been collected, 24 reclaimed, 172 rehomed/transferred, 63 were out to sleep and 15 owners were fined.
The county council said recently that the dog warden collected the most dogs of any county in Ireland from January 2010 to the end 2015 and that between January and November of 2015, the number of animals put to sleep was down 10 per cent on the same period in 2014.
The percentage of dogs out to sleep in 2014 was 35 per cent, compared to 23 per cent in 2015.