CARISA LEE

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Be­tween Christ­mas Day 2020 and New Year’s 2021, the Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) in Port-of-Spain res­cued eight dis­placed dogs from sev­er­al ar­eas across the coun­try.

“They have been brought in as lost dogs from dif­fer­ent ar­eas, Trinci­ty, Ar­naguez, Glen­coe, Cas­cade, Mar­aval, St James,” chair­man of Coun­cil of the TTSP­CA Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la re­vealed.

Ac­cord­ing to Ku­ruvil­la, a mem­ber of the TTSP­CA since 1985, in that time­frame, they have al­so got­ten sev­er­al calls from wor­ried own­ers who are try­ing to lo­cate their pets and have been tak­ing care of an­oth­er four dogs dis­placed af­ter Di­vali.

Ku­ruvil­la knows the cause, fire­works. Ac­cord­ing to the ac­tivist the loud ex­plo­sions scare these an­i­mals and they flee to safe­ty.

“A lot of an­i­mals are lost af­ter fire­works,” Ku­ruvil­la said.

“Re­mem­ber their hear­ing is 10 times our hear­ing so every sound is mag­ni­fied,” she con­tin­ued to ex­plain.

While there Ku­ruvil­la showed us a 6-year-old fe­male dog, who was nurs­ing pup­pies and seemed to have dam­aged her­self while run­ning away from the loud ex­plo­sions.

A lot of the oth­er dogs who were re­cent­ly brought in were timid and the grief from miss­ing their loved ones showed on their faces.

“It just makes them all dis­ori­ent­ed and ter­ri­fied,” she said.

Dogs hear near­ly twice as many fre­quen­cies as hu­mans and hear sounds four times fur­ther away.

“Cats are al­so af­fect­ed, wildlife are af­fect­ed, we’ve heard in­stances were poul­try, chick­ens have dropped dead, so it’s quite an im­pact on an­i­mals gen­er­al­ly,” she said.

It’s for these rea­sons the TTSP­CA and oth­ers have been ral­ly­ing for a com­plete ban to cit­i­zens us­ing fire­works.

“We would re­al­ly like to see fire­works tak­en out of the hands of the pub­lic be­cause we don’t think that there is any rea­son­able sen­si­ble way to con­trol fire­works if there in the hands of the pub­lic...peo­ple don’t fol­low the rules,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Chap­ter 11:02, Sec­tion 99 Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, any per­son who throws, casts, sets fire to, or lets off any fire­works with­in any town is li­able to a fine of one thou­sand dol­lars.

At the TTSP­CA Port-of-Spain shel­ter on Wednes­day, Ku­ruvil­la told Guardian Me­dia that they sub­mit­ted the rel­e­vant rec­om­men­da­tions be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee in 2017 about the im­pact of fire­work nois­es on an­i­mals. She said they al­so did a sur­vey of vet­eri­nary clin­ics on in­juries, re­ports of lost an­i­mals and of how many peo­ple re­quest­ed seda­tives.

Ku­ruvil­la said the lack of con­trol and un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of fire­work us­age in this coun­try is one of the main is­sues.