The Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animals has called for anyone with information on two horrific incidents of animal cruelty in recent days to contact gardai.
Details of the two separate cases of cruelty, involving a kitten and a puppy being thrown from moving cars, were outlined by the DSPCA today.
At 7pm last night, Thursday July 16th, the DSPCA received an emergency phone call concerning “a puppy that had been thrown from a car containing four men, with its tail on fire”.
“The animal had been urinated on, its tail was badly damaged and it was terrified,” a spokeswoman for the DSPCA said.
She said that, fortunately, some young local children were present and they called the DSPCA, which brought the puppy to the its mobile veterinary clinic where it was seen by a vet and given pain relief.
“The animal is now in the Dublin SPCA shelter and is currently undergoing surgery to have its tail amputated,” the spokeswoman said.
Gillian Duffy, an ambulance driver with the DSPCA who was first on the scene, said: “When I get a call like that my heart sinks. My first thought is to rescue the animal as quickly as possible, to try and alleviate any pain that it might be in. It is afterwards, when I have had time to consider the sick minds that could do such a thing to a defenceless animal, that I begin to get angry. We know that animal cruelty is a predictor crime, the people that could inflict this pain on a puppy will move on to more brutal crimes.”
Ms Duffy said the children and their family had, in acting quickly and contacting the DSPCA, they had “undoubtedly saved this puppy’s life”.
The animal, a Yorkshire terrier cross of about 11 weeks old, has been named Shiofra – the Irish word for ‘little fairy’.
The case has been reported to gardaí in Ballymun and anyone with information should contact gardai or the DSPCA.
In a separate incident only three hours earlier, on the Naas Road near Newlands Cross, a man witnessed a kitten being flung from a car window, the DSPCA said.
“As the car was a number of cars ahead of him he did not get a description of the car.”
The kitten is a female tortoiseshell about seven weeks old. The DSPCA said the animal was being carefully monitored and was “quite shocked”, but otherwise it is in good health.
The man who witnessed the incident and his wife looked after the kitten last night and brought it to the Dublin SPCA sanctuary this morning.
DSPCA communications manager Orla Aungier such acts of cruelty were “sickening”.
“How anyone can torture a defenceless animal is beyond me. As Gillian said, this behaviour is predictor crime, and often leads to even more serious heinous acts of cruelty. We are currently overrun with rescue animals, we are calling on members of the public to consider adopting a pet from us before they consider purchasing one from another source.”
Further information is available on the organisation’s website.