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Friday, February 28, 2025

TTSPCA manager laments rise in animal cruelty

by

Carisa Lee
225 days ago
20240718
TTSPCA’s Sara Maynard plays with some of the dogs at the shelter at 21 Christopher Samuel Drive, Mucurapo Road, St James.

TTSPCA’s Sara Maynard plays with some of the dogs at the shelter at 21 Christopher Samuel Drive, Mucurapo Road, St James.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Op­er­a­tions man­ag­er of the Trinidad & To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA), Sara May­nard, says she has no­ticed an in­crease in an­i­mal cru­el­ty, es­pe­cial­ly de­lib­er­ate at­tacks. She has called for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sug­gest­ed reg­u­la­tions and the en­force­ment of the ex­ist­ing law.

Her com­ment was in re­sponse to a video that sur­faced on so­cial me­dia show­ing some­one spray­ing a flam­ma­ble sub­stance on a kit­ten locked in a cage and set­ting it on fire. 

In the 28-sec­ond video, the black kit­ten can be seen run­ning around the cage and scream­ing in pain as the per­pe­tra­tors laugh. 

“Liar, liar, pants on fire ... Oh gosh, I go dead,” the per­son laughed. 

Some­one was al­so heard in the back­ground call­ing for wa­ter. 

“I was ren­dered speech­less; it was hor­rif­ic; it was ab­solute­ly hor­rif­ic,” she ex­claimed. 

May­nard told Guardian Me­dia that the TTSP­CA had been in­ves­ti­gat­ing an­i­mal cru­el­ty for years and had found that most of it tend­ed to be cru­el­ty through ig­no­rance, as peo­ple didn’t un­der­stand the re­quire­ments of car­ing for the an­i­mal. 

“As far as feed­ing and as far as ken­nelling, caging, ty­ing, etc, they didn’t com­pre­hend that,” she ex­plained. 

She said these were peo­ple they could work with. 

Some of the more se­ri­ous cas­es in­clud­ed star­va­tion, mis­treat­ment, or beat­ing. She said, un­for­tu­nate­ly, that it was not the first time she had seen some­one de­lib­er­ate­ly set an an­i­mal on fire.

These “mon­sters,” May­nard said, should face the brunt of the law. 

She said in 2019, there was an amend­ment to the An­i­mals (Dis­eases and Im­por­ta­tion) Act. Her NGO, along with oth­ers, was in­vit­ed by the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry to de­vel­op stan­dards that would help with the de­vel­op­ment of the reg­u­la­tions for the amend­ments. 

The pur­pose of the An­i­mal (Dis­eases and Im­por­ta­tion) Amend­ment Bill, 2019 is to pro­tect and pro­mote an­i­mal health and to pre­vent the in­tro­duc­tion and spread of an­i­mal dis­eases with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go and from oth­er coun­tries; to fa­cil­i­tate and reg­u­late trade in an­i­mals, car­cass­es, an­i­mal prod­ucts, and an­i­mal-re­lat­ed items; to es­tab­lish stan­dards for an­i­mal wel­fare and for oth­er con­nect­ed pur­pos­es.

In 2019, then po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said he would as­sign “spe­cif­ic of­fi­cers in each di­vi­sion” to ac­com­pa­ny an­i­mal ac­tivists to the homes or busi­ness­es of pet own­ers or in­di­vid­u­als who in­flict pain or suf­fer­ing on an an­i­mal.

He added that men who hanged a dog back in 2020 were dealt with.

May­nard said there was a lack of in­ter­est when it came to deal­ing with an­i­mal cru­el­ty in T&T. 

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion on those re­spon­si­ble for the heinous act can con­tact the TTSP­CA at  622-1367.


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