Sacha Wil­son

Po­lice were called in yes­ter­day to re­move dog lover Nali­ni Di­al from the com­pound of the San Fer­nan­do dog pound where she had gone to adopt the an­i­mals. This was the sec­ond day that Di­al was met with hos­til­i­ty, the first on Thurs­day when she was put out and the gates locked. De­ter­mined to save the lives of the dogs which will be killed if they were not adopt­ed, Di­al, founder of An­i­mals Are Hu­man Too in T&T, re­turned to the La­dy Hailes Av­enue pound yes­ter­day.She said to get to the pound, they had to pass through the Roodal Ceme­tery, but the care­tak­ers said they had in­struc­tions not to let any­one through. She said they de­cid­ed to use an­oth­er en­try point, through the dump. "We went there to look at the dogs to see which one we will adopt," she said.

"When we got there, no one was at the pound. Short­ly af­ter, three po­lice­men came and or­dered us off the com­pound. We told them we came to adopt the an­i­mals and we were wait­ing for the pound keep­er to ar­rive." She claimed a po­lice cor­po­ral was "very ar­ro­gant and abu­sive and the sit­u­a­tion be­came very an­tag­o­nis­tic." She said the pound keep­er ar­rived around 9 am and they were al­lowed to go in­side. Di­al said, how­ev­er, that they were told to go to City Hall, pay $100 per dog, then col­lect the an­i­mals. "If the dogs are not tak­en they will be killed...We were able to get a stay of ex­e­cu­tion, but we don't know for how long," she said.

"How­ev­er, most peo­ple do not have trans­porta­tion and be­cause the pound clos­es on the week­end the dogs will have to stay un­til Mon­day." Di­al said the pound keep­er could not as­sure them that the dogs would not be killed. At City Hall, Di­al said, she tried to get an au­di­ence with act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer De­o­dath Ra­goo­bar, May­or Mar­lene Coudray and Deputy May­or Navi Mu­radali, but was un­suc­cess­ful. She said she ex­plained the sit­u­a­tion to the sec­re­tary, but again she did not get a def­i­nite an­swer. In all, they paid for 24 dogs, but on­ly four left the pound yes­ter­day. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Mu­radali said Di­al lodged a com­plaint which would be ad­dressed by the may­or and the city coun­cil next week. He gave the as­sur­ance that the dogs which were paid for would not be put to sleep.