Giving stray dogs a new leash of life

In 20 minutes it's over; the jolly horseplay, the sulking and shaking, the skittish dashes to the kennel door when anyone passes. The end, via injection, is quick and quiet for yesterday's pets and unwanted strays.

"A bad enough week," says Co Clare dog warden Andy MacDonald of the pile of some 14 bodies he has just placed in black bags. "You get hardened of course, but it's still the worst part of the job." Most Fridays there's a particular tragedy about some bin bag or another. This week it's the one containing the plump, bewildered family pet who got lost and whose owners refused to pay the £25 fine to get him back.

Here today, gone tomorrow - life and death is not quite that fast for dogs in local authority pounds, but almost. Few survive past the five days for which they must legally be kept alive. "The fact is there are more dogs than people to give them homes," says Ciaran O'Donovan of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ISPCA).

Common sense - including among hard-pressed animal welfare groups - says that unfortunately, since there are far too many unwanted dogs, virtually all pound dogs must die. There are no homes for them.

Andy MacDonald and Frankie Coote began putting the theory to the test earlier this year when Frankie joined Co Clare dog pound on a government job assistance scheme.

"I'm no St. Francis. I just love the animals and get pleasure seeing them going to good homes. There's two ways they can go out of here - alive or dead. Naturally you'd like to see them go alive," he says.

In eight months, the former sports coach has found homes for 171 dogs out of a total of 719. That's just below a quarter, which is good. In fact, it's double the percentage for the whole country in 1998. Back then, of course, Andy MacDonald, like many local authority dog wardens, worked alone.

When you subtract those dogs the men reckoned absolutely had to be put down - 73 greyhounds, unpopular as pets, 28 biters or livestock worriers, and 80 new-born pups - the Clare pound has found homes for around a third of trouble-free dogs.

That's immensely better than the national average for re-homing, which is somewhere above one per cent and below 16 per cent of all dogs. It's impossible to know exactly, because national statistics lump reclaimed and rehomed dogs in the same category. On average, re-homing is probably less than 10 per cent.

In some pounds - notably Limerick county, Mayo, Donegal and Offaly - virtually no dogs were re-homed or reclaimed in 1998. In Kerry and Dun Laoghaire, where re-homing is taken seriously, around a quarter of dogs - and rising - find new owners. "I have more requests than I can fill - but just for certain kinds of dogs," says John Costello of the Dun Laoghaire pound.

The experience of the minority of better-performing rural and urban pounds suggests that finding homes for a significant percentage of "unwanted" dogs can be simply a matter of person-hours plus paying attention. In Clare, Frankie Coote is well known in the area and keeps his eyes and ears open for potential owners, lets people know about the Ennis pound and makes a lot of phonecalls. Just having the pound open to the public through the day saves a lot of dogs, says his colleague Andy MacDonald.

The Republic certainly has a large problem with unwanted dogs. Pounds handle some 32,000 dogs a year, or one for every 130 people in the population. That's a lot more than in the UK, where local authorities handle one dog for every 535 people. The UK figures are lower than those for the Republic partly because private organisations such as the RSPCA and the National Canine Defence League (NCDL) take in large numbers.

Still, the extra number of unwanted dogs in the Republic doesn't account for the superhigh kill count. In the UK, more than 85 per cent of the dogs that enter local authority pounds are saved and fewer than 15 per cent are destroyed. It's the opposite in the Republic: just 16 per cent are saved and 84 per cent are destroyed.

In 1998, the last year for which figures are available, 27,570 of the 32,850 Irish pound dogs were put down.

A more revealing comparison can be made with Northern Ireland, where there are almost as many strays per head of population - and a dramatically different kill rate of 51 per cent. The others were re-homed (12 per cent), reclaimed (28 per cent) or given to private shelters for rehoming (three per cent).

For the ISPCA, which helps run many of the country's pounds, the long-term solution to the undoubtedly large and complex problem of unwanted dogs is spaying and neutering the dogs - and educating people. Microchipping pets would also help.

Privately, many people of all sides of the "dog business" blame widespread ignorance and a national culture that rates animal welfare much lower than in many other rich nations.

Encouraging people to spay and neuter will reduce the longterm misery of unwanted animals, but Andy MacDonald and Frankie Coote's experience suggests that the short-term picture for thousands of dogs could also be less stark.

"There are a lot more homes out there than people think. It just takes a bit of effort to find them," says Frankie.