Stray dogs kept in vet’s as dog pound closes

Stray dogs in the city are being temporarily housed in a veterinary clinic.

The city dog pound in Ballybane is closed to the public until the end of November while the facility gets a €125,000 makeover.

Local dog charity MADRA (Mutts Anonymous Dog Rescue & Adoption) had offered to provide a short-term pound while the work was in train, but both sides could not reach an agreement over the fee.

MADRA had offered to collect all strays rounded up by the warden, set aside four kennels and care for them for five days at a cost of €500 per week, said spokesperson Eileen Keleghan. After that period, they would transfer the animals to their shelter in Camus and seek new owners.  She said the Council did not return calls about the proposal or attempt to negotiate. They instead set up the interim facility at a veterinary clinic.

The charity has now offered to take the dogs after they have spent five days in the interim Council facility, while a decision is made by the city’s Corporate Policy Group about whether to give the charity €10,000 in a long-term arrangement to reduce the euthanasia rate in the pound.

MADRA said in a statement that it should not be expected to provide a pound facility using its charity funds when taxpayers’ funds and dog licences went to provide the service.

“The adequate care of dogs during the renovation work should have been factored into the budget, and seen as a primary concern. This would then have made the transition from pound to rescue a seamless one,” the statement said.

“Our financial resources will be stretched even further by taking in these additional dogs, and as a result we will be forced to launch a separate fundraising drive to ensure that no dogs die while the pound is being upgraded.

“We are saddened that we have to ask people of Galway to fund this when we are already relying on their support to meet our existing running costs.”

A spokesman for Galway City Council said discussions with alternative service providers to step into the breach are ongoing until the pound reopens on November 23.

“We haven’t concluded those as yet. The arrangement is a little bit interim, but we are addressing the situation. But to reiterate, the dog warden service provided by Galway City Council continues as normal and arrangements are in place for the storage of stray dogs who are receiving veterinary services as required, as usual.”

MADRA – which runs a dog shelter in Camus at a cost of €160,000 per annum – had been taking dogs from the Galway City pound for four years to be re-housed. But the service was suspended last November when kennels became full.

The €10,000 Council grant proposed by MADRA would have subsidised the service for six months and go towards renting additional kennels to care for more dogs.

A report prepared by the City Council Environment Section last July said the number of dogs released to Madra from the pound had been based on “MADRA’s selection and random visits to the city pound”.

“MADRA have also advised that their facility is at capacity and hence directing dogs from Galway City Pound would not address this issue and would raise concerns for the welfare of the dogs in MADRA’s care. Furthermore, the new extension at Galway City Dog Pound will allow for greater duration of storage of dogs in a safe environment.”

The report urged the councillors to explore the re-homing of dogs from the pound through MADRA and “rather than a lump sum payment for this service, an incentivised re-homing policy should be examined that would link any payment to MADRA and the re-homing of any dog from the City Pound and thus reduce the Galway City euthanasia rate”

In its presentation to the Council last May, MADRA said the city pound killed 78 dogs or 47% of strays in 2013 – four times the rate of the county and neighbouring Co Mayo.

That compared to 35 in the county, which was a rate of 11% while in Mayo, 12 dogs were euthanised in 2013, which was a 13% rate. The Council’s 2014 figures show 104 dogs were put to sleep.