ANIMAL cruelty cases hit record levels in Scotland last year with more than one person being banned from keeping pets every week.
The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) charity said it carried out 55 separate investigations that led to banning orders in 2012.
Cases were reported from all areas of Scotland and ranged from animals being kept in overcrowded and insanitary conditions to pets being deliberately killed.
SSPCA chief superintendent Mike Flynn described the situation as shameful and said the charity's resources were now at full stretch. Calls to the SSPCA helpline have more than doubled in four years.
Mr Flynn said: "We cannot say whether cruelty to animals is increasing as people are more aware of who we are and how we can help, which means we are uncovering abuse and neglect which may not have been reported in previous years.
"However, cruelty to animals, whether it's violence, abandonments or neglect, is deplorable and an offence."
Cases investigated included an Edinburgh man who kept 39 pets in poor conditions being given a life ban from owning animals, a Dumfries man banned from keeping dogs for eight years for failing to feed his border collie, and a woman in Hawick receiving a five-year ban after throwing kittens from a bridge.
An Aberdeenshire woman was also banned from owning dogs for life after starving her Staffordshire bull terrier to death, and a Peterhead dog owner was banned from keeping dogs and jailed for three months for neglecting his Alaskan malamute.
In total, SSPCA inspectors and animal rescue officers were called out to 57,000 incidents last year, up from 38,000 four years ago.
More than 13,000 animals also had to be rehomed by the charity.
Mr Flynn appealed for help dealing with the rising number of animal cruelty cases, said: "We still believe Scotland can call itself a nation of animal lovers as we wouldn't have received so many calls or been able to rehome thousands of pets last year if huge numbers of people didn't care deeply for animals.
"Much of the cruelty and suffering we deal with is a result of ignorance rather than neglect."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article