Dead foal dumped in Kildare

A DEAD foal, around five-months-old, was found by a Brannockstown resident while out on a walk on the morning of New Year’s Day 1 January.

The foal was found on Mullaghboy road, Brannockstown, near Kilcullen. It's an offbeat road used for walking by locals and not known widely by those outside the area.

The resident was horrified on their discovery, and with everything closed on New Year’s Day, decided to give cllr Tracey O’Dwyer a call for help.

Thankfully, Cllr O’Dwyer was able to get in touch with Kildare County Council to arrange a removal of the foal.

Cllr O’Dwyer said: “A person that thinks that would be okay to do has no regard for any law, or has any moral compass, and I would worry about that. If you think it’s okay to dump any animal, that’s totally inhumane”.

Cllr O’Dwyer noticed a trend of these events that tend to happen on public holidays.

“That time of year, most of the services are away on holidays and I always find I see a spike of environmental issues on Christmas holidays in particular, because the whole country nearly shuts down. There’s no one really out and about and its an opportune time for something like this to happen.”

Martina Kenny, co-founder of My Lovely Horse Rescue, was outraged after hearing about the incident.

She said: “It happens quite a lot. Someone doesn’t want to pay somebody to take the body away. It’s people that have no empathy. Think of the mother of the foal and how she must be suffering alone now.”

My Lovely Horse Animal Rescue is an animal welfare organisation that rescues, rehabilitates and rehomes unwanted, neglected and abused animals with the aim of giving them a life worth living.

Ms Kenny urged animal owners to take care of their animals, and public holidays don’t excuse the neglect of animals.

“Neglect happens an awful lot during Christmas because sadly people don’t seem to think that animals need 24/7 care, even on Christmas day and all the other days that go along with it, they need food and water and looking after and need to be checked in on,” she said.

Ms Kenny recognises this as a crisis in animal welfare and believes that animal welfare laws need to be better enforced to decrease the rate of animal neglect in Ireland.

“It’s absolutely terrible and it’s happening all the time. We have become a country that is allowing it. There’s nothing being enforced; chips, passports, all of that.

“If you are on a chip or a passport, you should be held accountable.”

Separately, gardaí have weighed in on animal welfare issues across the county assisting the local authority seizing two horses who were left without shelter, sufficient water and grazing from the Naas area earlier this month during the cold snap.

In a post about the seizure of the horses, the gardaí said: “It should really go without saying - please take care of your animals”.