To WoofnHoof, who remains very sceptical about the Brandy story, perhaps an open dialogue can clear his assumptions:
Our fencing is standard fencing for North Queensland. We have one section of dog fence, only about 4 metres long, on a property of 190 acres, which is what you keep referring to. This has actually since been amended, but at the time, no problems were ever caused by this fence. In fact, the injury you saw in one of the photos was a cut on her leg which she did when she went down with colic on a previous occasion, and we have a lot of stones and rocks on the property.
Your other concern was her lack of weight gain, which I completely agree. Her weight was still an ongoing issue for us, but her windsucking was so severe, and completely untreatable, as we had tried several methods. If we fed her larger feeds, she would windsuck more, so she benefited from smaller, more regular feeds, and constant grazing or access to hay. She in fact had no front teeth at all from windsucking. Her weight gain was slow, but steady. I will attempt to find the photo I have from when she was seized, to demonstrate the significant weight gain she actually did incur whilst with us. She was extremely poor, and in fact could hardly stand when seized.
Regarding the monthly checks, we live in a remote area, and have nearly 20 horses, cattle, dogs etc. So I have a monthly visit from a mobile vet, for various things each month, and as Brandy was always kept in our house paddock, this is why her progress was monitored with interested from this vet, for no other reason. In fact, her colic had decreased after coming to us, and during the 7 months we had her, we dealt with colic on about 6 occasions successfully. We were not prolonging an ill and unhappy life.
The RSPCA claim they kept me informed of her progress with the vets. They did keep me informed on the Saturday, but on Sunday morning, I called every contact I had at the RSPCA, and got no response at all. It wasn't until I contacted the Bulletin after 3pm to see if they knew anything that they informed me she had been euthanised. This had been a really upsetting end to a day of ignored phone calls.
The reason for the 7-month period waiting for us to be able to adopt Brandy was that there had been a court case going on, in my understanding, which prevented any ongoing action regarding her circumstances until this was resolved. I believe this is the case with most foster care, taking place during the leagl wrangling. Otherwise, of course we would have applied sooner.
Regarding the communication from the shelter with ourselves during this period, it would be fair to state that this was relatively nil. They did not return phone calls, and demonstrated no interest in her welfare. There was no intial explanation of what fostering actually meant, as it was only after this fiasco that they admitted to me that all expenses I incurred for her care should have been covered by the RSPCA. We paid for all of her care, and her feed bill was significant, reaching thousands.
And finally, Michael Beatty's alleged email only further demonstrates the man and the organisation's sheer arrogance to the general public, from whom they rely on every year for millions in donations. In fact, I have spoken on a few occasions to Michael Beatty, and surprisingly, he was actually polite and reasonable when I spoke with him. However, it would appear that his written communication skills are somewhat lacking, which is a shame, considering his role as Media Liasion and Community Relations spokeman.
Siobhan McCabe
