MOSSEL BAY NEWS - In some areas of Mossel Bay, painfully thin dogs, walking with difficulty, are a regular sight.
They appear to be suffering terribly and are not running around with energy, wagging their tails, as healthy dogs would.
Also, some have mange or sores.
Mossel Bay Advertiser posed questions to the Garden Route SPCA Mossel Bay branch regarding its mandate and what it is able to do about this suffering.
Q: Is it the SPCA’s mandate to patrol areas, treat suffering animals or pick them up and treat them at the SPCA and provide worm and flea medication to dog owners?
A: The Mossel Bay SPCA inspectorate team is in the field daily, responding to animal cruelty complaints and collecting sick, injured and unwanted animals from those who are unable to care for them.
Many of our supporters would have noted that the SPCA is closed every Wednesday.
Once a week, on this day, we are able to send our full team into the most affected areas to conduct outreach and community work on a much larger scale.
Our aim is to educate owners on responsible pet ownership and to provide primary health care to those animals who so desperately need it.
During this time we book animals into our clinic for sterilisation.
This has a huge impact on prevention of cruelty.
Our clinic sterilises animals from the indigent communities on a daily basis. We are working towards bigger sterilisation drives in order to curb the overpopulation on a bigger scale.
There is so much more that can be done. We are working on fundraising for such drives. Sadly, many of the dog owners are not able to afford to keep their animals.
These animals are brought back to our SPCA, where they are given a second chance. Where we find cases of blatant and intentional abuse, our inspectors will not hesitate to prosecute the accused.
As a non-profit organisation, we do not receive any funding from the government for this community work.
This is why we work tirelessly to raise funds and rely on our community’s goodwill to keep our doors open and our vehicles on the road.
Q: What can the public do?
A: Please support us. Do get involved and volunteer please. We cannot do this without our communities' support.
Also, we rely on the public to be our eyes and ears and to report cases of animal abuse. Where animals are in need, we need to be informed.
Q: Tell us about the SPCA's confiscating neglected animals and putting them up for adoption.
A: We believe in education first: if an owner is willing to make the necessary changes to improve the lives of their animals, then this is first prize.
However, in some instances this is not possible and inspectors are authorised to uphold the laws that protect animals in South Africa.
We will not hesitate to confiscate animals and prosecute perpetrators of animal cruelty. We are grateful to the Mossel Bay Magistrate's Court, which is taking animal abuse cases very seriously, and we look forward to a number of successful prosecutions in the near future.
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