Waterford ISPCA inspector on welfare, workload and lasting love
Alice Lacey ISPCA Senior Inspector for Waterford and South Tipperary
Alice Lacey has always had a keen interest in animal welfare and began her journey as a volunteer over ten years ago, working her way up to the position as Senior Inspector with the ISPCA.
Ms Lacey takes the Waterford News & Star through what her role involves, the challenges she faces, and how we can do better as a society to improve the welfare of our animals.
With only nine Senior Inspectors in the country to cover 17 counties, Ms Lacey has responsibility for Waterford and South Tipperary, however, this can be challenging at times as most of her day consists of travelling to carry out welfare checks.
"With members of the public ringing in with welfare concerns, every call that's logged we attend, and so the workload can get very high but we always try to ensure that the public knows that whatever concerns they do have, will be filtered down to the allocated inspector dedicated to that county and it can be dealt with accordingly," explained Ms Lacey.
Ms Lacey had come from rescuing a wild heron the morning of the interview with the News & Star, which she said was “not a usual call” she gets, but that she has “great respect for wildlife” and those calls are "worthwhile" when the animal can be taken into the care of the ISPCA, rehabilitated and involves “getting them back out into the wild again.”
“This is what makes it an interesting job,” she said.
Ms Lacey described her role in more detail and while her time revolves mainly around animal welfare, as she outlined, she also deals with people on a daily basis.
“We would spend a lot of time working with people to get, for example, living conditions up to standard,” she said, adding that, “it’s not just doing a call one day and closing it off the same day. We would have people that we have potentially been dealing with for quite a long time, trying to educate them and improve the situation for their animals."
The education aspect of welfare calls is what helps keep pets and their owners together and Ms Lacey is there to assist those who seek advice and ensure their homes are most suitable for their pets’ needs.
“We’ll never leave an animal in a situation where its welfare is compromised and the onus is on the owner as they are the person who is legally responsible for the animal that’s under their control, whatever animal that may be,” she explained.
An example of a successful case, in Ms Lacey's opinion, involves working with pet owners “and not get them to make changes just because we’re asking them to, but to understand why they’re making the changes.”
Ms Lacey added that when she does follow up calls with the owners, they often express a level of gratitude and acknowledge that the suggested changes have had a positive impact on their pets.
There are two types of cruelty that are inflicted by pet owners onto their animals, according to the inspector: those being intentional and unintentional cruelty.
An unintentional cruelty usually involves an owner that is struggling to look after their animal, for example, elderly people with mobility issues. “They would usually have a senior dog and they may also not have family members to assist them," said Ms Lacey, adding that the pet's nails may need clipping or a visit to the vet could be overdue.
In other cases, where cruelty is intentional, Ms Lacey said the legislation of the animal cruelty act is extremely beneficial to ensuring the ISPCA and other officials can remove an animal from a harmful situation, followed by prosecution for the person responsible for the animal.
"With court cases, since the start of this year, it's been particularly busy. We've had 21 successful prosecutions in court with different outcomes... and we've received 23 disqualifications, meaning either a certain length of a disqualification from owning an animal or a lifetime ban," said Ms Lacey. "They're the results that we want to see in court as opposed to eight or nine years ago when cases were being taken and somebody might just be convicted and fined €250."
Being an animal lover (of dogs in particular, without sparkling dachshund earrings to give us a clue), Ms Lacey admitted it's sometimes difficult to put those feelings aside when on the job, however, it's something she does well and "deals with the emotions afterwards" so as not to compromise the process of any animal being brought to safety. However, as a person who whole-heartedly embraces her career, it would be unusual if she hadn't brought at least one of the animals home... and right enough that's exactly what she did when she rescued a beautiful border collie named Leon.
This was a very sensitive topic of conversation and when Ms Lacey was asked if she has any pets, she responded softly, while evidently heartbroken: "I lost one of my dogs last week. It's still kind of one of those things... It's hard to talk about."
"Leon, he was a Border Collie, and I actually had him for seven years last week and he was about seven when I got him. But he came from one of my welfare cases that I did with the dog warden and I think why he made such an impression on me was because he was so shut down when I got him that he just did a complete flip, in the space of a few months, to a dog that felt safe and secure again, and I think that would be a lasting memory for me, where he came from and where he ended up."
Marian, Ms Lacey and her partner's little Jack Russell, turned 12 years old in February and she was delighted to report "he's still going strong."
