The Dublin Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (DSPCA) is a registered charity which was established in 1840 to prevent cruelty to animals and is now Ireland’s largest animal welfare organisation. Cruelty, neglect, accidental injury and sickness to animals continues today – and the charity still continue to deal with these problems.
In a new monthly feature, the Her.ie crew will go out and spend a day with various charities. This month we focus on the work of the wonderful DSPCA.
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Located in Mount Venus Road in Rathfarnham, the DSPCA deal mainly with cases of cruelty and neglect as a charity. The DSPCA takes in sick, injured and cruelly treated animals of every species from pets like dogs, cats, snakes, rabbits, parrots, ferrets and horses. They also deal with wild animals such as deer, foxes, swans and ducks. Every year, the DSPCA rescue 1000’s of animals from injury and neglect and prosecute cases of cruelty where ever possible. Animals are either rehomed as pets and released back into the wild if wildlife.
For our visit, we chatted to Gillian Bird, the Press Officer for the Charity who kindly showed us around the various shelters in Mount Venus Road and told us about some of the work they do.
“We were started just a few years after the RSPCA was started in the UK. The main key founder of the RSPCA was a gentleman from Galway called Richard Martin who was a politician in the UK. He died just before the DSPCA was founded but he was the founder of the entire thing. We were set up initially to deal with the welfare of horses and the welfare of dogs. From there, we progressed to dealing with every single type of animal. In the old days, they did a bit of everything, education, rescue, they were also the equivalent of the dog pound and the cat pound so any unwanted animals were all brought into the DSPCA at that point. We were also the SPCA so we were working with other groups who were founded after we were founded.
We moved out of Grand Canal Quay in 1990 and moved to Rathfarnham, to the Rest Fields initially. We moved to Mount Venus in 2003.”
Mount Venus Road is the current location of the DSPCA which Gillian describes: “We currently have 32 acres and we have capacity here for about 700 animals. We have a number of different facilities here; the shelter itself with a primary veterinary facility. We have isolation and holding units where animals are held until the vets check them. From there, the animals are moved into our isolation unit where they are usually kept for 5-10 days. Then they start the vaccinations.
The dogs are then moved to the treatment kennels and this holds about 50-60 dogs. These would be animals recovering from illness and injury. They would then be moved to the homing kennels until they are to be rehomed or until a court case is finished. Cats are moved to the cattery for rehoming. Cats are often fostered. We have about 250 fosterers on the books for our cats.
We have 54 staff between all of the centres. On a daily basis, there is about 30 volunteers working in the centre and shelter.”
The animals arrive in the shelter mainly through the inspectors: “We have a girl who works here called Lorna Swift and she takes all of the phone calls. You may have someone calling in to report and injured bird or to report a case of cruelty. She decides which is priority and which one can be dealt with or wait a little bit. She co-ordinates this with our two inspectors who work on the road. We have one for the North Side and one for the South side. The inspectors mainly bring the animals into the centre here, the public also bring in animals into the centre by pre-arrangement.
We get an enormous amount of calls about stray dogs. Stray dogs isn’t something that we take into the centre here. Stray dogs go to the pound and that’s unfortunately the arrangement. They have to do five days in the pound before they have to be re-homed, legally. We have an arrangement with the pound. We do from time to time take in injured dogs from the pound. The pound does put animals to sleep but they won’t put down a re-homable dog.
Lorna would be really busy with the calls but a lot of the calls we get in would be education calls. Questions from people as to what to do with animals, really. We will assist people, they can trap the animal and bring it here. The conditions of that is they have to become a feeder for that animal.”
As Gillian is eager to stress, a lot of the DSPCA’s work revolves around education: “We are the society for prevention of cruelty to animals and preventing cruelty is an important thing. We have an education department here that runs free talks for schools and any group that would have us. We have groups of kids that come up the shelter for tours.
We conduct education programmes right through pre-school, secondary school and third level education. We go into the prisons and give talks. We basically go wherever anyone will listen to us about the work we do! We teach empathy about the animals. Our public awareness has gone up drastically. A lot more people are reporting cruelty. We also take on children for work experience. We are creating a next generation of animal carers.”
As well as the shelter, the DSPCA has various different functions: “The charity costs about $2 million a year to run and so because of that, we decided to safeguard the future of the DSPCA and so we did a business plan that involved a private veterinary clinic and boarding for cats and dogs. We have a doggie training school and we have a photo booth if people want to come up here and get their photos taken with animals. The profits all go to the charity. It’s a one stop shop for animal owners here!”
In terms of certain animals that can’t be re-homed, the cases are very few: “There are occasions when we cannot re-home an animal. We cannot be a no-kill shelter. If we get an animal in that is so badly injured, the only humane thing to do would be to put it down. We might get an animal that is very aggressive and after assessment, occasionally we might have to put that animal down. We have a social responsibility. The majority of the animals do find homes. We have no time limit on keeping an animal here.”
Fostering programmes are an important part of the shelter, as Gillian describes: “Our fostering programmes are very important. Pregnant cats or dogs, litters of young kittens etc. The fosterers are fantastic. They get given all the food but they also give the animal time and space, which is extremely valuable.”
For the shelter itself, the dogs and cats have plenty of space, as do their outdoor friends: “The dogs are kept in the kennel areas. They have nice big kennels and they get out for walks, usually about two walks a day but they get a lot of out time. We learn as much as we can about the dog, their diet, exercise, their behaviour. The cats are mainly inside. They get a lot of TLC! They’re overstocked with volunteers in there, the cats get lots of attention!”
If anyone is considering adopting an animal, the policy is quite strict in order for the animals to find their forver homes: “When the animals leave the DSPCA, they are micro chipped, vaccinated and neutered. Our rehoming policies are quite strict, we do home interviews and home checks. In terms of adoption, everything goes through an application form. It’s two pages long with fairly obvious questions and questions like how many hours would the animal be alone for or is there someone new in your life, like building work or a new baby. We want animals to go to their forever home so we need to check that. We want to make sure that animal doesn’t come back to us. The main criteria for the dogs is that people would be around for most of the day or would make provision for walks or attention. We check the houses to make sure that the home is safe for the animal too. We want the animal to be part of people’s families.”
For more information on the DSPCA, you can log on to the site here.
